Appendix A
Units and Conversion Factors
A.1 Units
The Système International d’Unités (International System of Units or SI system) was adopted by the 11th General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM) in 1960 and is now used by almost the entire world. In the SI system, all quantities are expressed in terms of seven base (fundamental) units. These base units and their standard abbreviations are as follows:
Meter (m): Distance light travels in a vacuum during 1/299 792 458 of a second.1
Kilogram (kg): Mass of a cylinder of platinum–iridium alloy kept in Paris.
Second (s): Duration of 9 192 631 770 cycles of the radiation corresponding to the transition between two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium-133 atom.
Ampere (A):
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