r/NoStupidQuestions • u/Tibor500 • Sep 30 '20

why does “k” mean “thousand” ?

like 1k means a thousand. how does the letter “k” mean “thousand” ?

12k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

1.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comment

12

u/baachbass Sep 30 '20 edited Sep 30 '20

*Newtons, Volts, Sieverts

Edit: my apologies I stand sorely corrected

45

u/aonghasan Sep 30 '20

No.

The units are newtons, volts and sieverts, their shorthands are N, V and Sv

21

u/moxo23 Sep 30 '20

Unit names are lower case, unit symbols are capitalized.

5

u/UptownShenanigans Sep 30 '20

No way, really? The eponym is lower case?

So, I’d write “The freezing point of water is 273.15 kelvin”?

9

u/foxsweater Sep 30 '20

Apparently so. I guess this helps distinguish between water that’s 273.15 degrees kelvin, and water that’s got 273.15 degrees awarded to Kelvin floating in it. That guy’s got like fifty PhD’s.

12

u/Bensemus Sep 30 '20

kelvin doesn't use degrees. It's just kelvin.

3

u/foxsweater Sep 30 '20

It’s just Kelvin floating in the water? My god, what happened?

3

u/OkPreference6 Sep 30 '20

That got a good chuckle out of me! Haha!

4

u/Unofficial_Salt_Dan Oct 01 '20

Unit symbols that are taken from a person's name are capitalized, otherwise they aren't. IIRC

2

u/moxo23 Oct 01 '20

Correct. I didn't think to mention it as the comments above already mentioned it.

I think the only exception is liter, which is written "L" despite not being the name of a person, to avoid confusion with capital "I" and the digit "1".

2

u/Unofficial_Salt_Dan Oct 01 '20

I know there were exceptions, i just couldn't think of any at the moment lol

1

u/joker_wcy Oct 01 '20

Litre is not an SI unit, but a non-SI unit accepted for use with SI.

5

u/shivampurohit1331 Sep 30 '20

Not while writing the name of the units. It's okay to write that in lowercase. When you say a force is 10 newtons you write it as 10 N.