Abstract
IT is very desirable that men of science should adhere to the conventions which have been est.ablished with regard to the use of the terms employed for units in the metric system. It has been generally agreed that the prefixes mega- and micro- should indicate the multiplication and division respectively by a million of the unit expressed by the term they precede. In this way a micrometre usually shortened to micron, means a millionth part of a metre, or, in other words, thousandth of a millimetre; and a micromillimetre signifies a millionth part of a millimetre, or, what is the same thing, a thousandth part of a micron. It is, therefore, to be regretted that in the translation, published in Geneva, by L. Duparc and Vera de Dervies, of Nikitin's excellent account of Fedorov's “universal” method of microscopical mineral research we find the term micromicron employed in place of micromilli metre. The former term should mean a millionth part of a micronthat is to say, a metre x 10-12, unit that might be usefully employed in expressing intermolecular or interatomic distances in crystals, which we are now at last in a position to determine in many cases.
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EVANS, J. Micromillimetres and Micromicrons. Nature 94, 34 (1914). https://doi.org/10.1038/094034a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/094034a0
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