Can you name the S.I. units?

created by davidr

Enter an unit name in the box below
Correctly named unit names will show up below
Answers do not have to be guessed in order
Also try: Metric System (SI) prefixes

You have 6 minutes to guess after you click the button below.

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Quantity	Unit
Length
Mass
Time
Electric current
Thermodynamic temperature
Luminous intensity
Amount of substance
Frequency
Angle
Solid angle
Force
Pressure
Energy
Power
Electrical charge

Quantity	Unit
Electrical potential difference
Electrical capacitance
Electrical resistance
Electrical conductance
Magnetic flux
Magnetic field
Inductance
Temperature
Luminous flux
Illuminance
Radioactivity
Absorbed radiation dose
Equivalent radiation dose
Catalytic activity

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S.I. Units Quiz

Rating:	Report a mistake
Created by: davidr -
Published: November 12th, 2008
Category: Science
Plays: 134,233

Tags: Physics Quizzes, unit, quantity

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	SirZapdos:	Nov 12th, 2008 at 17:51 GMT	-3 points
	Tough game, had to think back to Calculus courses I'd taken. Of the half that I missed, I had only heard of a few of them. Anyone who gets them all deserves serious props. Lastly, is the litre not a SI measurement?

	chodanutz:	Nov 12th, 2008 at 18:01 GMT	11 points
	i think "amp" should count for ampere

	jimpoz:	Nov 12th, 2008 at 18:19 GMT	-3 points
	Why is mass "kilogram" and not the base unit "gram"?

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	Booger:	Nov 12th, 2008 at 18:34 GMT	-1 points
	Very interesting quiz, but I think volume should be in there if you have length and mass.

	RandallPinkston:	Nov 12th, 2008 at 18:51 GMT	2 points
	Tough but fun. I remembered more of these from AP Physics (20 years ago) than I would have thought. What about adding "newton"? That's a S.I. unit that a lot more people will have run across that some of these others.

	davidr:	Nov 12th, 2008 at 19:47 GMT	8 points
	@Jim: I don't know. But the S.I. standard unit of mass is very definitely the kilogram and not the gram.

	davidr:	Nov 12th, 2008 at 19:49 GMT	8 points
	@Booger: the S.I. standard unit of volume is just the cubic metre.

	rahv:	Nov 12th, 2008 at 19:50 GMT	1 point
	@booger: volume (for instance, expressed in litre) can be represented by length ... 1 litre = 0.001 m^3 @russell: newton is a unit of force which is given by mass times velocity ... 1 N = 1 kg * m/s^2

	davidr:	Nov 12th, 2008 at 19:51 GMT	1 point
	@Russell: Whoops. The omission of the newton was an error on my part. I'll get onto the admins to get them to fix that.

	davidr:	Nov 12th, 2008 at 19:54 GMT	6 points
	@ared: Yes, the 1N = 1kg.m/s^2 but all of the units apart from the first six are defined in terms of the others. For example, 1Hz = 1s^-1, 1C = 1A.s and so on.

	rahv:	Nov 12th, 2008 at 19:55 GMT	-2 points
	@davidr: each base unit represents something that can be measured, for instance one second is 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 caesium 133 atom" (whatever that exactly means). the unit for mass is "kilogram" because thats the weight of one litre of water and all the other mass units are derived from that.

	davidr:	Nov 12th, 2008 at 20:00 GMT	2 points
	@ared: Historically, the kilo was defined as being the weight of a litre of water under certain conditions but now it's defined to be the weight of a specific lump of platinum-iridium alloy in Paris. But even that doesn't really answer the question -- they could just have easily said that the weight of a gram is the weight of a millilitre of water and then redefined it in terms of a much cheaper piece of platinum!

	rahv:	Nov 12th, 2008 at 20:01 GMT	1 point
	@davidr (again): ah, okay ... should've paid more attention in physics. i've looked it up and seen that newton is indeed a SI unit, so my mistake. sorry.

	davidr:	Nov 12th, 2008 at 20:07 GMT	0 points
	Wow! The admins included newton within about a minute of my asking them. Go, the admins! :-) `Amp' is now accepted and `gram' is an alternative for `kilogram'.

	Fro:	Nov 12th, 2008 at 20:28 GMT	2 points
	mho should be acceptable for electrical conductance...I'm an electrical engineer and we NEVER used siemens while taking college courses.

	Zero:	Nov 12th, 2008 at 20:54 GMT	1 point
	Not too important, but not all the links on the results page link directly to the right page (eg. siemens links to a company).

	davidr:	Nov 12th, 2008 at 21:08 GMT	2 points
	@Fro: Thanks - I didn't know that. The 1mho is defined to be exactly 1S so I guess we should accept it as a synonym, even though it isn't, technically, an SI unit.

	davidr:	Nov 12th, 2008 at 21:19 GMT	1 point
	@Zero: That seems to be a tradition of Sporcle. :-)

	charlie:	Nov 12th, 2008 at 22:07 GMT	0 points
	Good quiz, 21/28 very disappointed by my performance considering i did all 3 sciences and maths at A level! Becqurel especially as i could remember Bq but not the actual name! ARGHHHHHH! Great quiz!

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	komischeskind:	Nov 13th, 2008 at 04:38 GMT	5 points
	@Andy: degree Kelvin is not acceptable for Kelvin, since Kelvin "lost" it's "degree" (being funny today...) in 1967-68.

	annie:	Nov 13th, 2008 at 08:32 GMT	7 points
	this is a proper geek quiz hehe

	davidr:	Nov 13th, 2008 at 09:04 GMT	1 point
	@Andy: Technically, the unit is the kelvin, not the degree Kelvin. On the other hand, `celsius' is accepted for `degree Celcius' so I don't see why we shouldn't accept `degree Kelvin' as an alternative.

	davidr:	Nov 13th, 2008 at 09:07 GMT	3 points
	@Lenard: Volume isn't there because the S.I. unit of volume is just the cubic metre and this quiz only covers named units. The litre is a unit which is accepted for use within the S.I. and defined to be equal to the cubic decimetre but is not, itself, an S.I. unit.

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	Bethannie:	Nov 13th, 2008 at 14:17 GMT	3 points
	wow, toygh quiz! But so satisfying for each one you remember!

	montecarlo:	Nov 13th, 2008 at 14:43 GMT	3 points
	all of sporcles resident medical physicists appreciate all of the radiation units. now we can tell our profs that we are really just studying when they walk in on us while we are sporcling. :)

	Blue_Iguana:	Nov 13th, 2008 at 17:00 GMT	1 point
	gotta love whoever named the henry, genius

	KingSlazo:	Nov 13th, 2008 at 17:41 GMT	1 point
	I got pretty much all of the ones I've learned in A-Level Physics so far. =D Annoying that I can't spell Celsius though.

	charlie:	Nov 13th, 2008 at 18:15 GMT	1 point
	"I got pretty much all of the ones I've learned in A-Level Physics so far. =D Annoying that I can't spell Celsius though." but you could spell becquerel!

	davidr:	Nov 13th, 2008 at 18:19 GMT	3 points
	@tomato: Committee decision. But it's named after Joseph Henry, a 19th century American physicist.

	Annie:	Nov 13th, 2008 at 22:54 GMT	-1 points
	Why doesn't it accept "meter"

	davidr:	Nov 14th, 2008 at 00:48 GMT	3 points
	@Annie: "Meter" has always been accepted. I've no idea why it wasn't working for you.

	Catherine_F:	Nov 14th, 2008 at 20:19 GMT	6 points
	Yay I suggested this quiz months ago and here it finally is :D thanks davidr!

	Shiv:	Dec 15th, 2008 at 17:07 GMT	2 points
	I disagree with your choice of including 'Celsius temperature'. The SI unit for all temperature is Kelvin. Given a temperature in degrees Celsius, one must convert to K to do any calculations! Otherwise, nice quiz :)

	davidr:	Dec 22nd, 2008 at 00:05 GMT	2 points
	Sorry, Shiv, but the degree Celsius is a derived SI unit. See http://www.bipm.org/utils/common/pdf/si_brochure_8_en.pdf , pages 114 and 118 (pages 22 and 26 in the PDF file).

	Joe_Ball:	Dec 31st, 2008 at 00:33 GMT	-1 points
	Why isn't Denier on this quiz?