Prefixes and powers of ten

5 minAS Level1.2.4

AI-drafted, independently checked · not yet teacher-reviewed

By the end of this lesson

By the end you can recall the ten syllabus prefixes with their symbols and powers of ten, and convert confidently between them, including for squared and cubed units.

The ten prefixes

A prefix is a shorthand for a power of ten. It works on any unit, base or derived: km, mA, GHz, μF, MPa.

Prefix	Symbol	Factor
tera	T	$10^{12}$
giga	G	$10^{9}$
mega	M	$10^{6}$
kilo	k	$10^{3}$
deci	d	$10^{-1}$
centi	c	$10^{-2}$
milli	m	$10^{-3}$
micro	μ	$10^{-6}$
nano	n	$10^{-9}$
pico	p	$10^{-12}$

Apart from centi and deci, they go up in steps of 1000.
Case matters. M (mega, $10^{6}$ ) and m (milli, $10^{-3}$ ) differ by $10^{9}$ .
μ is the Greek letter mu. If you can't type it, "u" is a common stand-in.

Quick check

Multiple choiceQuestion 1 · Recall

Answer the 2 questions above to continue.