this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] JayDee@lemmy.sdf.org 27 points 3 days ago (2 children)

That's actually an interesting one.

The 'p' could have a different meaning for a variety of languages. 'Puissance' in French, 'Potenz' in German, 'potential' or 'power' in English, 'pondus' or 'potentia' in Latin, or 'Potens' in Danish (probably the Danish one originally, since it was a Danish chemist who first introduced the measurement).

It's very fun that because of the vagueness, various languages can have its meaning directly translated to their own.

[–] mmddmm@lemm.ee 10 points 3 days ago (1 children)

All those words have the same meaning.

[–] porous_grey_matter@lemmy.ml 9 points 3 days ago

And the same origin, it's not a coincidence they all start with P

[–] Gutek8134@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

There's also pico-, prefix for 10^-12