Energy Management Principles, 2nd Edition

Appendix B

Units and Conversion Factors

Introduction

This book has been prepared using the international systems of units (SI) that has been or is being adopted by all nations of the world. In SI practice, the approved units for energy and power are the joule and the watt:

Energy, heat, work: joule (J)=1 newton meter=1 watt second.

Power: watt (W)=1 joule per second=1 newton meter per second.

When SI units are used for calculations, they are frequently preceded by a prefix that is a multiple of 10. Then the same basic unit can be used to measure a very large or a very small quantity. Thus, a millimeter is slightly more than 1/16 of an inch, while a kilometer is slightly more than ½ mile. The prefixes, symbols, and multipliers are:

tera ...