Micrometer

Micrometer

Description

1) A unit of length that is equal to one millionth of a meter or one thousandths of a millimeter. An old, but still common, name for micrometer is micron. The preferred SI (International System of Units) term is micrometer.

2) A precision instrument used to accurately measure thickness, distance or angles of small areas or thin materials. Micrometers are often used in conjunction with a microscope.

Synonyms and Related Terms

micron; um; Mikrometer (Deut.); micromètre (Fr.);

Authority

• Walter C. McCrone, John Gustave Delly, The Particle Atlas, W. McCrone Associates, Chicago, IV, 1972

• Matt Roberts, Don Etherington, Bookbinding and the Conservation of Books: a Dictionary of Descriptive Terminology, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington DC, 1982

• The American Heritage Dictionary or Encarta, via Microsoft Bookshelf 98, Microsoft Corp., 1998

• Van Nostrand's Scientific Encyclopedia, Douglas M. Considine (ed.), Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1976

• Random House, Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, Grammercy Book, New York, 1997