What is "base unit"

n. 1 A unit of measurement on which others are based. 2 The main unit of a computer or hi-fi system.

A base unit (also referred to as a fundamental unit) is a unit adopted for measurement of a base quantity. A base quantity is one of a conventionally chosen subset of physical quantities, where no subset quantity can be expressed in terms of the others. In the International System of Units, there are seven base units: kilogram, metre, candela, second, ampere, kelvin, and mole.

In the language of measurement, quantities are quantifiable aspects of the world, such as time, distance, velocity, mass, temperature, energy, and weight, and units are used to describe their magnitude or quantity. Many of these quantities are related to each other by various physical laws, and as a result the units of a quantities can be generally be expressed as a product of powers of other units; for example, momentum is mass multiplied by velocity, while velocity is measured in distance divided by time. These relationships are discussed in dimensional analysis. Those that can be expressed in this fashion in terms of the base units are called .

Base unit may refer to:

• SI base unit, a base unit in the SI system
• Base unit (measurement), in physics, a unit of measurement from which derived units may be compounded
• An administrative unit of the United States Army Air Forces