14.8. The Metric Units extension

| Chapter 14: Numbers and Equations |

| 14.8. The Metric Units extension

To sum all of this up, what started out as a simple business of setting a notation for lengths becomes something quite elaborate when we try to match the actual notations used by scientists and engineers. It's all optional, of course, but as we want more and more of this, we might find ourselves with a spread of notations like this:

> 1mm ... 1cm ... 1m ... 1km

and in addition we might want equivalents for the inch, the yard and the mile; and verbal forms like the meter and the millimeter, and then alternate spellings like the kilometre; and then both singular and plural forms. And that's just length - what about density, area, pressure, velocity and a dozen other physical quantifies? After a while these declarations start to look as vastly fussy as a box of presentation cutlery.

Fortunately the whole set is indeed available in a presentation box, and at no extra charge. The built-in extension "Metric Units by Graham Nelson" sets up a whole range of scientific units, with all the notations we are likely to want, and scaled about right for human situations. Like the other built-in extensions, it has its own documentation and examples.

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