What the heck is an "n" in capacitors?

[TerryD]

All I've done is picofarads and mfds, what ever they are.  My Bugera schematic is in Chinese and they have an n for capacitors as well.  Like 100n or 1nf.  How do I translate those to pf and mfd?
Thanks, Terry

[sluckey]

µ = micro = 10^-6
n = nano = 10^-9
p = pica = 10^-12

[Willabe]

Like 100n or 1nf.  How do I translate those to pf and mfd?

100nF = 0.1uF

1nF = 0.001uF     0.001uF = 1000pF

22nF = 0.22uF  0.022uF

Edit; Sorry guys, fixed it. 

[PRR]

I agree with you, Terry.

Usta be everything was "m". Very small stuff was "mm". But somebody found some more letters somewhere and now "m" isn't even "micro" any more.

[TerryD]

Thanks everyone.  Thanks Willabe. That helps me to apply it.  Terry

Wait!  Your sure those figures are right??

[Willabe]

Wait!  Your sure those figures are right??

Dho!         Sorry, lot a help I am. 

Glad you caught that. 22nF = 0.022uF

[jjasilli]

I think the idea is to avoid the use of decimal points, which can be overlooked or mistaken for an errant dot.  But I agree with PRR.  It brings a different type of confusion.

There are conversion tables on the Internet you can Google.   Doug may have one in the Library Section.

[uki]

This chart in the following link will help you with the conversion!

http://www.justradios.com/uFnFpF.html

[PRR]

p = pica = 10^-12

This is officially "pico", not "pica". (But I had to look it up.)

"Pica" was a typewriter size or a font metric; also a disease and a naughty-word.

[sluckey]

This is officially "pico", not "pica". (But I had to look it up.)

Haha! Pico is what I originally wrote but I convinced myself that it should be pica.   

[frus]

Interesting, to me (who have been using metric system all my life) there's no confusion at all, to me ".0022uF" instead of "2.2n" is kinda confusing


Just a matter of habit, I suppose


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_prefix

[dude]

This something you have to know as most schematic's use either or.
al

[pompeiisneaks]

Yeah I grew up in school having the metric system as a dual learning thing with Imperial units, so I know both pretty handily, but I get where confusion comes from, I really only think that my generation got that, the newer generation is back to imperial in the US, they've seemingly given up on metric or so it seems.

~Phil

[PRR]

> using metric system all my life

And a decimal system is familiar to most in the US: our money comes in dollars ($1), dimes ($0.1), cents ($0.01), and mega-bucks (national budget/debt).

However as a metric-user, how often do you buy a micro-liter of beer or a nano-meter of wood? Then shave the wood down a picometer? Those units are common in laboratories but not in everyday life. A picometer, about one million-millionth of a yard, is much smaller than an atom.

As a metric-user, you may have the advantage on us because you have a table of kilo deci centi milli handy, and you recall there were some other things at the bottom.

I have a 500 page "Pocket Ref", with wire gauges, joist tables, airport codes, welding gases, screw threads, weight of oak tar etc, and conversion factors for "every" measure including buckets only found in the Bible, pre-metric units from Japan and Russia, furlongs to Ramden chains, but I can't find a table of metric prefixes in there. It does tell me a millimeter is 0.001 meters, but no nano or pico conversions.

The Farad is just really darn big. Bigger than nearly any practical capacitor application. (1F caps in boom-cars prove my point.) It made sense at the time. The Volt and Ampere were picked working with "battery and wire" scale of electricity. A Volt or so, an Amp or so. However something which is NOT a "wire" (is nearly an anti-wire) is impractically large at this scale. Every capacitor (boom-cars and some backup storage excepted) has to be milli, micro, nano, or pico. And we do use about that full range, so the decimal point is always dancing around.