Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!watmath!iuvax!rutgers!cmcl2!phri!roy
From: roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Subject: Re: Rational Capacitor Prefixes
Keywords: nF, cap value prefixes
Message-ID: <3951@phri.UUCP>
Date: 23 Aug 89 20:20:55 GMT
References: <26043@quacky.mips.COM>
Reply-To: roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith)
Organization: Public Health Research Inst. (NY, NY)
Lines: 24

In article <26043@quacky.mips.COM> vaso@mips.COM (Vaso Bovan) writes:
> In conformance with good S.I. practice, the "nanofarad" is coming into wide
> usage. (European schematics have long used nanofarads).

	I remember once seing a (hand-drawn) schematic with a 10 nF cap on
it.  I was so convinced it was a mistake I tracked down the engineer who
drew it, had him dig out his copies, and confirm that, yes indeed, he meant
nanofarads.  That was, I think, about 7-8 years ago, and no, it wasn't a
european design.  But I do agree that nF should be a perfectly reasonable
unit and should be in general use.  Same goes for mF for milifarads.  I
will object, however, to centifarads and decifarads.

> Those who balk at nanofarads should consider it wasn't long ago that 
> "puffs" were given as uuF, eg 47uuF.

	Not to mention the even older MF and MMF for microfarads and
micromicrofarads.  BTW, is there any standardized rule which says u is for
micro.  The correct prefix is the greek mu, but since that's not an ascii
character, everybody uses the latin u, which looks similar.
-- 
Roy Smith, Public Health Research Institute
455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016
{att,philabs,cmcl2,rutgers,hombre}!phri!roy -or- roy@alanine.phri.nyu.edu
"The connector is the network"