The kilogram (also kilogramme[1]) is the base unitofmass in the International System of Units (SI), having the unit symbol kg. It is a widely used measure in science, engineering and commerce worldwide, and is often simply called a kilo colloquially.[2] It means 'one thousand grams'.
The kilogram, symbol kg, is the SI unit of mass. It is defined by taking the fixed numerical value of the Planck constanth to be 6.62607015×10−34 when expressed in the unit J⋅s, which is equal to kg⋅m2⋅s−1, where the metre and the second are defined in terms of c and ΔνCs.
1793: The grave (the precursor of the kilogram) was defined as the mass of 1 litre (dm3) of water, which was determined to be 18841 grains.[10]
1795: the gram (1/1000 of a kilogram) was provisionally defined as the mass of one cubic centimetre of water at the melting point of ice.[11]
1799: The Kilogramme des Archives was manufactured as a prototype. It had a mass equal to the mass of 1 dm3 of water at the temperature of its maximum density, which is approximately 4 °C.[12]
The kilogram is the only base SI unit with an SI prefix (kilo) as part of its name. The word kilogrammeorkilogram is derived from the Frenchkilogramme,[14] which itself was a learned coinage, prefixing the Greek stem of χίλιοιkhilioi "a thousand" to gramma, a Late Latin term for "a small weight", itself from Greek γράμμα.[15]
The word kilogramme was written into French law in 1795, in the Decree of 18 Germinal,[16]
which revised the provisional system of units introduced by the French National Convention two years earlier, where the gravet had been defined as weight (poids) of a cubic centimetre of water, equal to 1/1000 of a grave.[17] In the decree of 1795, the term gramme thus replaced gravet, and kilogramme replaced grave.[12]
The French spelling was adopted in Great Britain when the word was used for the first time in English in 1795,[18][14] with the spelling kilogram being adopted in the United States. In the United Kingdom both spellings are used, with "kilogram" having become by far the more common.[1] UK law regulating the units to be used when trading by weight or measure does not prevent the use of either spelling.[19]
In the 19th century the French word kilo, a shorteningofkilogramme, was imported into the English language where it has been used to mean both kilogram[20] and kilometre[21]. While kilo as an alternative is acceptable, to The Economist for example,[22] the Canadian government's Termium Plus system states that "SI (International System of Units) usage, followed in scientific and technical writing" does not allow its usage and it is described as "a common informal name" on Russ Rowlett's Dictionary of Units of Measurement.[23][24] When the United States Congress gave the metric system legal status in 1866, it permitted the use of the word kilo as an alternative to the word kilogram,[25] but in 1990 revoked the status of the word kilo.[26]
The SI system was introduced in 1960 and in 1970 the BIPM started publishing the SI Brochure, which contains all relevant decisions and recommendations by the CGPM concerning units. The SI Brochure states that "It is not permissible to use abbreviations for unit symbols or unit names ...".[27][Note 2]
For use with east Asian character sets, the SI symbol is encoded as a single Unicode character, U+338F㎏SQUARE KG in the CJK Compatibility block.
The SI system after the 2019 redefinition: the kilogram is now fixed in terms of the second, the speed of light and the Planck constant; furthermore the ampere no longer depends on the kilogramAKibble balance, which was originally used to measure the Planck constant in terms of the IPK, can now be used to calibrate secondary standard weights for practical use.
The replacement of the International Prototype of the Kilogram (IPK) as the primary standard was motivated by evidence accumulated over a long period of time that the mass of the IPK and its replicas had been changing; the IPK had diverged from its replicas by approximately 50 micrograms since their manufacture late in the 19th century. This led to several competing efforts to develop measurement technology precise enough to warrant replacing the kilogram artefact with a definition based directly on physical fundamental constants.[5]
Prior to the redefinition, the kilogram and several other SI units based on the kilogram were defined by a man-made metal artifact: the Kilogramme des Archives from 1799 to 1889, and the IPK from 1889 to 2019.[5]
In 1960, the metre, previously similarly having been defined with reference to a single platinum-iridium bar with two marks on it, was redefined in terms of an invariant physical constant (the wavelength of a particular emission of light emitted by krypton,[29] and later the speed of light) so that the standard can be independently reproduced in different laboratories by following a written specification.
At the 94th Meeting of the CIPM in 2005, it was recommended that the same be done with the kilogram.[30]
In October 2010, the CIPM voted to submit a resolution for consideration at the General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM), to "take note of an intention" that the kilogram be defined in terms of the Planck constant, h (which has dimensions of energy times time, thus mass × length2 / time) together with other physical constants.[31][32] This resolution was accepted by the 24th conference of the CGPM[33] in October 2011 and further discussed at the 25th conference in 2014.[34][35] Although the Committee recognised that significant progress had been made, they concluded that the data did not yet appear sufficiently robust to adopt the revised definition, and that work should continue to enable the adoption at the 26th meeting, scheduled for 2018.[34] Such a definition would theoretically permit any apparatus that was capable of delineating the kilogram in terms of the Planck constant to be used as long as it possessed sufficient precision, accuracy and stability. The Kibble balance is one way to do this.[36]
As part of this project, a variety of very different technologies and approaches were considered and explored over many years. Some of these approaches were based on equipment and procedures that would enable the reproducible production of new, kilogram-mass prototypes on demand (albeit with extraordinary effort) using measurement techniques and material properties that are ultimately based on, or traceable to, physical constants. Others were based on devices that measured either the acceleration or weight of hand-tuned kilogram test masses and which expressed their magnitudes in electrical terms via special components that permit traceability to physical constants. All approaches depend on converting a weight measurement to a mass and therefore require precise measurement of the strength of gravity in laboratories (gravimetry). All approaches would have precisely fixed one or more constants of nature at a defined value.[citation needed]
Because an SI unit may not have multiple prefixes (see SI prefix), prefixes are added to gram, rather than the base unit kilogram, which already has a prefix as part of its name.[37] For instance, one-millionth of a kilogram is 1mg (one milligram), not 1μkg (one microkilogram).
Serious medication errors have been made by confusing milligrams and micrograms when micrograms has been abbreviated.[38] The abbreviation "mcg" rather than the SI symbol『μg』is formally mandated for medical practitioners in the US by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO).[39] In the United Kingdom, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and Scottish Palliative Care Guidelines state that "micrograms" and "nanograms" must both be written in full, and never abbreviated as "mcg" or "μg".[38][40]
The hectogram (100 g) (Italian: ettogrammooretto) is a very commonly used unit in the retail food trade in Italy.[41][42][43]
The former standard spelling and abbreviation "deka-" and "dk" produced abbreviations such as "dkm" (dekametre) and "dkg" (dekagram).[44] As of 2020,[update] the abbreviation "dkg" (10 g) is still used in parts of central Europe in retail for some foods such as cheese and meat.[45][46][47][48][49]
The unit name megagram is rarely used, and even then typically only in technical fields in contexts where especially rigorous consistency with the SI standard is desired. For most purposes, the name tonne is instead used. The tonne and its symbol, "t", were adopted by the CIPM in 1879. It is a non-SI unit accepted by the BIPM for use with the SI. According to the BIPM, "This unit is sometimes referred to as 'metric ton' in some English-speaking countries."[50]
^ ab"Kilogram". Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. Retrieved November 3, 2011.
^
Fowlers, HW; Fowler, FG (1964). The Concise Oxford Dictionary. Oxford: The Clarendon Press. Greek γράμμα (as it were γράφ-μα, Doric γράθμα) means "something written, a letter", but it came to be used as a unit of weight, apparently equal to 1/24 of an ounce (1/288 of a libra, which would correspond to about 1.14 grams in modern units), at some time during Late Antiquity. French gramme was adopted from Latin gramma, itself quite obscure, but found in the Carmen de ponderibus et mensuris (8.25) attributed by Remmius Palaemon (fl. 1st century), where it is the weight of two oboli (Charlton T. Lewis, Charles Short, A Latin Dictionarys.v. "gramma", 1879).
Henry George Liddell. Robert Scott. A Greek-English Lexicon (revised and augmented edition, Oxford, 1940) s.v. γράμμα, citing the 10th-century work Geoponica and a 4th-century papyrus edited in L. Mitteis, Griechische Urkunden der Papyrussammlung zu Leipzig, vol. i (1906), 62 ii 27.
^Convention nationale, décret du 1er août 1793, ed. Duvergier, Collection complète des lois, décrets, ordonnances, règlemens avis du Conseil d'état, publiée sur les éditions officielles du Louvre, vol. 6 (2nd ed. 1834), p. 70.
The metre (mètre) on which this definition depends was itself defined as the ten-millionth part of a quarter of Earth's meridian, given in traditional units as 3 pieds, 11.44 lignes (aligne being the 12th part of a pouce (inch), or the 144th part of a pied.
^Peltier, Jean-Gabriel (1795). "Paris, during the year 1795". Monthly Review. 17: 556. Retrieved August 2, 2018. Contemporaneous English translation of the French decree of 1795
^Tom Stobart, The Cook's Encyclopedia, 1981, p. 525
^J.J. Kinder, V.M. Savini, Using Italian: A Guide to Contemporary Usage, 2004, ISBN0521485568, p. 231
^Giacomo Devoto, Gian Carlo Oli, Nuovo vocabolario illustrato della lingua italiana, 1987, s.v. 'ètto': "frequentissima nell'uso comune: un e. di caffè, un e. di mortadella; formaggio a 2000 lire l'etto"
^U.S. National Bureau of Standards, The International Metric System of Weights and Measures, "Official Abbreviations of International Metric Units", 1932, p. 13
NIST: This particular Rueprecht Balance, an Austrian-made precision balance, was used by the NIST from 1945 until 1960
BIPM: The FB‑2 flexure-strip balance, the BIPM's modern precision balance featuring a standard deviation of one ten-billionth of a kilogram (0.1μg)
BIPM: Mettler HK1000 balance, featuring 1μg resolution and a 4kg maximum mass. Also used by NIST and Sandia National Laboratories' Primary Standards Laboratory
NIST: K20, the US National Prototype Kilogram resting on an egg crate fluorescent light panel
