Physical Quantities, Standard and Units GK

Physical quantities standard and units general knowledge (general science

gs) for UPSC, IAS, Banking, Railway SSC and other competitive examinations.
Contents:
Physical Quantities
Standard and Units
Physical Quantities With Their Symbols And Units in SI & c.g.s
System
To explain the natural phenomena we take help of physics. Physics enable us to
understand logically as well as mathematically all natural phenomena. That’s why
we introduced Physical quantity and unit.

Physical Quantities
All the laws of physics are generally expressed in terms of Physical Quantities.
As an example if you go to school or college from your home by walk, you need
to know your speed and time. If you start to go at 9:30 AM and reach at 10 AM,
you spend 30 minutes by walk. Again distance between your school and home is
6 Km then you can easily calculate your walking speed which is [Distance/Time]
= 200 m/minute. Thus from the above example, time, speed and distance
are Physical Quantities. Some other kinds of physical quantities are force,
temperature, density, momentum, area, acceleration etc.

Classification of Physical Quantities:

Generally Physical Quantities are classified into two classes such as
fundamental and derived quantities.
Fundamental Quantities: They are not defined in terms of other physical
quantities. Example: Length, Mass and Time.
Derived Quantities: Their definition derived from mainly fundamental physical
quantities. Example: speed, area, acceleration, momentum, density etc. In case
of speed to define it, you need to two fundamental quantities like Length and
time.

Classification of Physical quantities in terms of Direction:

Physical quantities are also classified into two types one is Scalar and other is
Vector quantity.
Scalar Quantity: Physical quantities those have only magnitude NOT direction.
Speed, density mass etc are scalar.
Vector Quantity: A vector quantity is one which has BOTH magnitude and
direction. Force, momentum, displacement, acceleration, velocity etc are vector
quantities.
Explanation: Vector quantities are denoted by putting a ‘bar’ (—) or ‘arrow’ (→)
sign. Like force is a vector quantity and denoted by –

Now if you push a table along north direction by applying force 5 Newton, then
according to vector, it is written as 5N-North. Here 5 is a scalar and if you put its
direction (here North), it become vector.

Standard and Unit:

Measurement of physical quantities consists of two steps –

1. one is choice of the standard and

2. other is comparison of the standard to the quantity to be measured.

Here choice of the standard is known as Unit. Comparison of the standard to the
quantity to be measured provides the total measurement of that quantity.
Consider the length of a pen, it is about 10 cm long. It means that pen’s length is
10 times the unit of length, centimeter.
Units depend on choice. Each choice of units leads to a new system or set of
units. You may consider any length as a unit of length. But it is not standard.
Earlier, people from various countries used different systems of units. In
1960 GCWM recommended that a metric system of measurements called the
International System of Units or SI Unit (System Internationale).

Classification of Units:
Units are also classified into two types
Fundamental Units: can not be derived from other unit. Three
fundamental units are Meter, Kilogram and Second.
Basic Units: There are seven basic units – meter (m), kilogram (kg),
second (s), ampere (A), kelvin (K), mol, candela (Cd).
Supplementary units: Plane angle and Solid angle are considered as
Supplementary units.
Derived Units: can be derived from other units.
Unit of Length: In SI system the unit of length is meter. One meter is defined as
the distance between two lines on a particular platinum-iridium rod at 0 C kept a t
the IOWM office located near Paris. In modern physics it is also defined as the
path travel by light in free space during a time interval of 1/299792458 second. In
c.g.s and fps system the unit of length is centimeter and foot respectively. For
large distance we used Kilometer, Mega-meter mile etc. To measure the distance
in space we used astronomical unit or AU, light-year and parsec. 1 AU is the
distance between earth and sun.

1 parsec = 3.2615 light-years = 206264.8 AU = 3.085×1016 m.

1 Light-year = 63241.1 AU = 9.461 trillion km
= 9460730472580800 m.
1 AU = 149597870 km. = 149597870700 m.
1 km = 1000 m. = 103 m = 105 cm.
1 m = 100 cm.

Similarly very small distance is measured by millimeter (mm) , micrometer (μm),

angstrom (Å), nano-meter (nm) and femtometer (fm).

1 m = 106 μm = 109 nm = 1010 Å = 1015 fm.

Units are also classified into various types such as C.G.S, M.K.S, F.P.S etc. cgs
is for small unit and mks is for larger.
Unit of Mass: In SI system the unit of mass is Kilogram (Kg). One kg is defined
as the mass of a particular solid cylinder of platinum-iridium alloy kept a t Sevres.
To measure the large masses we used tonne. In c.g.s and f.p.s system the unit
of mass are gram and pound respectively.

1 tonne is equal to 103 kg.

Unit of Time: In SI system the unit of time is second. It is represented by small

later “s”. Previously it was defined as the 1/86400th part of a mean solar day. But
in modern physics 1 second is redefined as atomic clock such as time taken to
complete 9192631770 periods of transition of the two hyper levels of the ground
state of the Cesium 133 atom.

Physical Quantities With Their Symbols And Units in SI &

c.g.s System
Physical Symbol* Unit in SI SI Unit Unit in c.g.s c.g.s
Quantity Unit
Symbol Symbol

Length l Meter m Centimeter cm

Mass M Killogram kg gram g

time t Second s second s

electric I ampere A biot biot

current

temperature T kelvin K kelvin K

amount of n Mole mol

substance

luminous Iv candela cd
intensity

area A square metre m2 square centimetre cm2

volume V Cubic meter m3 Cubic centimeter cm3

speed, v, s meter/second m/s centimeter/second cm/sec

velocity

acceleration a metre per m/s2 cm/second cm/s2

second squared
squared

Angular L kg-m2/s g-cm2/s

momentum

Angular ω rad s−1 – rad s−1 –

speed (or
angular
velocity)

Capacitance C Farad F statfarad statF

wavenumber k reciprocal m-1 reciprocal cm cm-1

metre

Current J ampere/meter2 A/m2

density

density, ρ kg per cubic kg/m3 gram/cubic metre g/m3

mass density metre

Electric Q coulomb C statcoulomb e.s.u

charge

Electric V Volt V statVolt statV

potential

Electrical R ohm Ω – –
resistance

Energy E Joule j Erg erg

Force F Newton N Dyne dyn

Frequency f Hertz Hz Cycle/sec

magnetic B tesla tesla gauss gauss

field

refractive μ unit less – unit less –

index

Inductance L henry H abhenry abH

Momentum p kg-m/s kg-m/s g-m/s g-m/s

Permeability μ henry/meter H m−1 abhenry/centimeter abH/cm

Permittivity ε farad/meter C2N-

1
m-2

plane angle Θ radian rad – –

solid angle Ω steradian sr – –

pressure P pascal (N/m2) Pa bar Dyne/cm2

power P watt (Joule / W Erg / second

second)

Specific heat c J kg−1 K−1

capacity

Wavelength λ Meter m Centimeter cm

Entropy S Joule/Kelvin J K−1 – –

dynamic Pascal-second Pa·s poise [g/(cm·s)] P

viscosity

Heat Q Joul J Erg erg

Surface Y N m−1 or J m−2 Dyne cm−1 / erg m−2

tension

Chemical μ Joule/ mol J

potential mol−1
* The bolt symbols are vector quantities.