RONNA RONTO QUETTA QUECTO

No, this is not some foreign language but additional ways of describing the vast and the minute. Most of us are familiar with SI units, the Système international d'unités or SI system of units of measurement. Except for a few diehards of my (older) generation, and the crackpot Brexiters who find changing away from imperial measures such as ounces and feet difficult, or anathema in the case of the Brexiters, we all use them on a daily basis.

What very few of us have to do, though, is cope with the really very, very big and the vanishingly tiny. Step up the scientists at the recent General Conference on Weights and Measures at Versailles who have tackled the problem of how succinctly to describe the weight of a planet, say, or the number of data held on internet servers, or at the tiny scale, measuring the cosmic microwave background, which are too large and small respectively for easy enumeration in the current SI system.

So here are the four new prefixes to the basic measurement units:

• ronna is 10²⁷ and has the SI symbol R
• ronto is 10^-27 and has the symbol r
• quetta is 10³⁰ and has the symbol symbol Q
• quecto is 10^-30 and has the symbol symbol q

As an example, the Earth’s mass is about 6 ronnagrams, 6R or 6²⁷ grams. Written out in full that would be 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 grams. You get the point.

It is hoped that the new prefixes will fill the requirement for handling the very largest and very smallest numbers, and future-proof these aspects of the SI units, satisfying  the world’s need – at least for the next twenty to twenty-five years. 

For more about SI units, see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units.

Betts Ecology are perhaps unlikely to need to use the new prefixes but we do like to keep up with the science and we use SI units throughout the company. As modern Europeans and unwavering supporters of the EU of which we consider ourselves members in spirit despite the stupid blunder of Brexit, we endeavour to avoid the imperial system of weights and measures. 

 © Betts Ecology