The SI units of measurement have an interesting history. Over time they have been refined for clarity and simplicity.
- The meter (m), or metre, was originally defined as 1/10,000,000 of the distance from the Earth’s equator to the North Pole measured on the circumference through Paris. In modern terms, it is defined as the distance traveled by light in a vacuum over a time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second.
- The kilogram (kg) was originally defined as the mass of a liter (i.e., of one thousandth of a cubic meter). It is currently defined as the mass of a platinum-iridium kilogram sample maintained by the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures in Sevres, France.
- The second (s) was originally based on a “standard day” of 24 hours, with each hour divided in 60 minutes and each minute divided in 60 seconds. However, we now know that a complete rotation of the Earth actually takes 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4.1 seconds. Therefore, a second is now defined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium-133 atom.
- The ampere (A) is a measure of the amount of electric charge passing a point in an electric circuit per unit time. 6.241×1018 electrons, or one coulomb, per second constitutes one ampere.
- The kelvin (K) is the unit of the thermodynamic temperature scale. This scale starts at 0 K. The incremental size of the kelvin is the same as that of the degree on the Celsius (also called centigrade) scale. The kelvin is the fraction 1/273.16 of the thermodynamic temperature of the triple point of water (exactly 0.01 °C, or 32.018 °F).
- The mole (mol) is a number that relates molecular or atomic mass to a constant number of particles. It is defined as the amount of a substance that contains as many elementary entities as there are atoms in 0.012 kg of carbon-12.
- The candela (cd) was so named to refer to “candlepower” back in the days when candles were the most common source of illumination (because so many people used candles, their properties were standardized). Now, with the prevalence of incandescent and fluorescent light sources, the candela is defined as the luminous intensity in a given direction of a source that emits monochromatic radiation of frequency 540⋅1012540⋅1012 Hertz and that has a radiant intensity in that direction of 1/683 watts per steradian.