Hopefully an easy science question:

[J-P]

I am reading: http://www.alaineknipes.com/teaching/BI ... 08pics.htm

I am looing atht eh measurements and it says 1ou = 25um .. can anyone translate that into metric?

Much appreciated

Edited the Typo: said "10" previously and it should have read "1"

[xrayjeeper83]

The table below shows how meters are related to five other measures of length.
Unit Length
kilometer (km) 1,000 m (1 X 103 m)
meter (m) 1 m
centimeter (cm) 0.01 m (1 X 10-2 m)
millimeter (mm) 0.001 m (1 X 10-3 m)
micrometer (um) 0.000001 m (1 X 10-6 m)
nanometer (nm) 0.000000001 m (1 X 10-9 m)

[J-P]

thank you! what is an ou?

[Lil' Swimz$]

Um means the measurment is unknown, I'm guessing its some sort of length, as you can see in the link it changes per photo, so I'm guessing its showing proportions of weight/length, width, maybe even teeth? (haha probably not teeth)

[xrayjeeper83]

thank you! what is an ou?

Google tells me OU is University of Oklahoma

[J-P]

yea I googled it to and it didn't give a def .. just science docs using the term

[Dadof4]

um= 1 micrometer

I think OU is a measurement of light wave oscillation.

[RTR]

Hello? This is not a science question per se, it is a labeling question. The pictured scale is in micrometers/micrometres, aka microns in this country. Therefore the pictured life forms can be measured by reference to the baseline scales, which carry the same enlargement as the critters pictured. The abbreviation is not a "u", it is a Greek letter - note the tail. Typing that as a U/u will give endless confusion. rather than do that, translate it to the word "micrometre" or "micrometer" or "micon" by your own preference if you do not have access to Greek alphabet.on forums.

HTH

[Cuchulainn]

A micrometer, also written µm, is one thousandth of a millimeter - it's 10-6m.
so 1,000,000 microns in 1 metre

[J-P]

[quote="µm[/quote] <== how'd you do that?

cool!!

Thanks for the replies

[ryverrat]

The O.U. refers to the optical units equivalent - this defines what each unit on the scale build into the microscope is equal to at the given power of magnification the microscope is set to. See this link:
http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~bioslabs/metho ... uring.html
I this case (from your link) each unit of length of the parasite as viewed under the microscope is equal to 2.5 μm (micrometers).
If you are looking for where to get the μ (lower case Mu in Greek letters) symbol (your professor may want you to use it in reports) in Windows - all programs- system tools- character map. This thing is handy for any symbols you may need.