tera- [TE ruh] (Greek: "monster, marvel"; a decimal prefix used in the international metric system for measurements).Used in the metric [decimal] system as one trillion [U.S.] and billionfold [U.K.]: 1012 [1 000 000 000 000] or a million million. The metric symbol for tera- is T. According to the Academic Press Dictionary of Science and Technology, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, 1992: Tera- comes "from a Greek term meaning 'marvel' or 'monster,' with the sense that this is a huge and marvelous quantity." Oh, PLEASE! This is about the worst reason for misusing a prefix that I have ever seen. It would make much more sense to have tera based on tetra- [Greek], "four" then terato- which has no relative connection with this or any metric unit. terabit:
One trillion bits (eight bits make a byte, the common measure of memory or storage capacity). The word "bit" is a blend of binary and digit.
terabyte:
A unit of information of one trillion bytes.
teracurie:
One trillion curies. A curie is a unit of radioactivity equal to 3.7 times ten to the tenth power disintegrations per second.
teracycle:
One trillion cycles (complete processes or sequences of pocesses in a machine or electronic device, or the time that this takes).
teraflop:
One trillion floating-point operations per second; a measure of computer speed.
terahertz:
A unit of frequency equal to one trillion hertz.
teraohm:
A unit of electrical resistance, equal to one trillion ohms, or 1 000 000 megaohms.
teraohmmeter:
An ohmmeter having a teraohm range for measuring extremely high insulation resistance values.
terapascal:
One trillion pascals (units of pressure or stresses equal to one newton per square meter).
terasecond:
One trillion seconds.
teravolt:
One trillion volts.
terawatt:
A unit of power, equal to one trillion watts, or 1 000 000 megawatts.
|