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From: ankleand@mit-caf.MIT.EDU (Andrew Karanicolas)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics,rec.ham-radio
Subject: Re: New subject: Tesla vs gauss, and other obscure units
Message-ID: <3382@mit-caf.MIT.EDU>
Date: 30 Oct 89 23:23:35 GMT
References: <1914@sactoh0.UUCP> <28601@buckaroo.mips.COM> <1989Oct29.174631.12960@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> <1989Oct29.224736.2838@utzoo.uucp> <851@ariel.unm.edu>
Reply-To: ankleand@mit-caf.UUCP (Andrew Karanicolas)
Organization: Microsystems Technology Laboratories, MIT
Lines: 16

In article <851@ariel.unm.edu> ee5391aa@hydra.unm.edu.UUCP (Duke McMullan n5gax) writes:
>In article <1989Oct29.224736.2838@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
>writes:

(lots of stuff deleted)

>Habit, I suspect, coupled with the natural conservatism that we all possess.
>This will change. How many people do you know who know the peta- and exa-
>prefixes, and the femto- and atto- prefixes? (Admittedly not useful to most
>of us, unless you're measuring the circumference of Pluto's orbit in electronic
>radii....;^)
>

In the microelectronics world, thinking in terms of femtofarads is 
fairly commonplace.  For example, in calculations of gate-source capacitances
for a minimum feature size MOS device. .