11TH CBSE
UNITS, MEASUREMENTS AND
MATHEMATICAL
PHYSICS
Physical Quantity
Any measurable quantity is called a physical
quantity.
eg: displacement, velocity, temperature etc.
Physical
Quantity
Fundamental Derived
Quantity Quantity
Fundamental Quantities
Physical quantities that cannot be split into simpler
physical quantities are called fundamental
quantities.
They are mass, length, time, electric current,
thermodynamic temperature, quantity of substance
and luminous intensity.
The units of fundamental quantities are called
fundamental units. eg: mass- kilogram (kg), length-
metre (m)
Derived Quantities
Physical quantities other than the fundamental
quantities are called derived quantities.
Their units are called derived units.
eg: velocity – m s−1
force – kg m s−2 or newton (N)
Unit of a Physical Quantity
Measurement of any physical quantity involves
comparison with a certain basic, arbitrarily
chosen, internationally accepted reference
standard called unit.
eg: force – newton (N), work – joule (J)
Systems of units
SI
A system of units is a set of related units that
CGS are used for calculations.
System
The system includes base units and derived
of units
units,
MKS
Some units exist in more than one system of
units.
FPS
S.I System
The international system of units universally
abbreviated SI [from the French - Le Syste’me
Internationale d’ Unites] is accepted as the standard
form of the metric system.
• In SΙ system there are seven fundamental units and
two supplementary units
Larger Units of Length
Astronomical Unit (AU): It is the average distance
between Earth and Sun
1 AU = 1.496 × 1011 m
Light year (ly): It is the distance travelled by light
in vacuum in one year.
1 ly = 9.46 × 1015 m
Parallactic second (parsec): It is the distance at
which an arc of length 1 AU subtends an angle of 1
second
1 parsec = 3.2 ly = 3.08 × 1016m
Smaller Units of Length
micron (μm): 1 μm = 10−6 m
nanometer (nm): 1 nm = 10−9 m
angstrom (°A): used to express atomic size
1°A= 10−10 m
fermi (fm): used to express size of nuclei
1 fm = 10−15 m
SI System Prefixes
Rules for Writing the Units and their Symbols
The full name of unit in honour of great scientists should
be written in small letters.
eg. newton, ampere etc.
The symbols or abbreviations of unit, named after great
scientists should be written with capital initial letter
eg. ‘W’ for watt, ‘N’ for newton, ‘A’ for ampere etc
The symbol of unit should be written either in full or in
agreed abbreviation.
eg. For ‘second’ either use ‘s’ or ‘second’ and not ‘sec’.
Rules for Writing the Units and their Symbols
Plurals should not be used for units.
eg. N s means newton second (impulse)
Double prefixes shall not be used
eg. ‘μμs’ is not allowed, the allowed symbol is ‘ps’.
No hyphens (-) shall be used in units.
eg. N-m not permitted.
Half space to be kept between different units in a derived unit.
eg. N m
Rules for Writing the Units and their Symbols
No more than one slash shall be used in a unit.
• eg. m/s2 and not m/s/s. It is better to express this as ms-2
No full stop to be used after units
• eg. N and not N.
Dimensions
Powers to which fundamental quantities are to
be raised in order to express a physical
quantity.
Dimension of a physical quantity is
represented within square brackets.eg
[distance] = L
Dimension formulae for velocity
Here dimensions of
velocity are 1 in
length, −1 in time
Principle of homogeneity of dimensions
Only physical quantities of the same dimensions
can be added, subtracted, equated or compared.
