Pico, Nano, Micro, Milli
Tim Griffin

Tim Griffin, 2023

When a scientist is counting all the atoms in the sun
Or measuring a muon for the mass of only one
They may use the usual units but the numbers make more sense
When they modify by multiplying tens with exponents:
Pico, nano, micro, milli (pico, nano, micro, milli)
Kilo, mega, giga, tera (kilo, mega, giga, tera)

Now a “kilo” is a thousand, which is ten to power three
Like a kilowatt or kilogram or kilocalorie
But “mega” means a million, which is ten to power six
So you probably should practice how to properly prefix:
Pico, nano, micro, milli (pico, nano, micro, milli)
Kilo, mega, giga, tera (kilo, mega, giga, tera)

When you’ve got so many zeros that a number’s hard to say
Or a decimal so long it makes your data disarray
You can modify the size of any unit that you use
But without the proper prefixes you only will confuse:
Pico, nano, micro, milli (pico, nano, micro, milli)
Kilo, mega, giga, tera (kilo, mega, giga, tera)

From the tiniest of measures to the greatest ones of all
When a quantity you count is very big or very small
Simply write a little number to the right, above the ten
But you’ve got to know your prefixes… so say ‘em once again:
Pico, nano, micro, milli (pico, nano, micro, milli)
Kilo, mega, giga, tera (kilo, mega, giga, tera)
Pico, nano, micro, milli (pico, nano, micro, milli)
Kilo, mega, giga, tera (kilo, mega, giga, tera)

Notes

I was reading a book about electricity and found I had forgotten what some of the numerical prefixes meant; so I wrote a song that puts exponent prefixes in order from x10 to the minus 12 (pico) on up to x10 to the 12 (tera).

To show why this matters, here are some examples to help you understand how big or small these quantities can be:

-One picogram is the same as .000000000001 grams, or one trillionth of a gram. This is about the mass of a single DNA molecule in one cell of a hummingbird, which is pretty awesome; but the decimal is so long that you may stare at it for a while just counting the zeros. There are actually eleven zeros because we moved the 1 twelve decimal places from the ones place. You can do it that way, but calling it a picogram is far more convenient once we know what a picogram is.

-One nanometer (1/1,000,000,000 meter, or one billionth of a meter) is about the distance your fingernails grow every second.

-One microsecond (1,000,000 second, or one millionth of a second) is the amount of time it takes light to travel about 300 meters. Given that light can travel 186,000 miles per second, we're still dealing with pretty small numbers here.

-One milliliter (1/1,000 liter, or one thousandth of a liter) is the volume of a cube measuring one centimeter on each side. Call it a very small sip of water.

Now for the big ones...

-A kilometer (1,000 meters, or one thousand meters) is a distance you can run in under five minutes if you are in pretty good shape. Some people can do it a lot faster; Noah Ngeny of Kenya once ran a kilometer in two minutes, 11.96 seconds.

-A megawatt (1,000,000 watts, or one million watts) is enough electricity to power about 750 homes.

-A gigabyte (1,000,000,000 bytes, or one billion bytes) is enough computer memory to store about sixteen hours of music in MP3 format, or about seven minutes of HDTV video.

-A terameter (1,000,000,000,000 meters, or one trillion meters) is a pretty long distance. The distance from the Earth to the Sun is about seven terameters.

There are other prefixes for even bigger or smaller numbers, but this song will help you make a good start on your journey into the weird world of very big and very small measurements.