Fortunately, I never get confused and then I forget that I don’t get confused and then confusion happens. It all started when my mother said to me “I could not fail to disagree with you less.”
This post was not written to obfuscate, becloud, muddy or confuse. It just ended up that way.
Gauss – abbreviated as G or Gs, is the cgs unit of measurement of a magnetic field B, which is also known as the “magnetic flux density” or the “magnetic induction”. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauss_(unit)
Each and every manufacturer seems to identify power in a way that makes theirs look amazing. If you are familiar with some of the terms such as micro, nano, femto, milli, kilo, deci etc then you may not get as confused as many of us do. It’s easy to read rating as 800 microTesla which happens to be much less than 100 milliTesla. 1 (one) microTesla is one millionth of a Tesla while 1 (one) milli-Tesla is one thousandth of a Tesla making one milliTesla 1,000 times larger than a microTesla. But you knew that already! Right?
I find that many customers who call in are not familiar with some of these terms and are sometimes fooled by the writer of the data he or she is reading so let me put a chart in front of us that I hope helps a little.
Here are a few boring definitions:
Term | Definition |
Gauss | Gauss, abbreviated as G or Gs, is a unit of measurement of a magnetic field B, which is also known as the “magnetic flux density” |
Magnetic Flux Density | The amount of magnetic flux through a unit area taken perpendicular to the direction of the magnetic flux. Also called magnetic induction. |
Tesla | The unit of magnetic flux density in the International System of Units, equal to the magnitude of the magnetic field vector necessary to produce a force of one newton on a charge of one coulomb moving perpendicular to the direction of the magnetic field vector with a velocity of one meter per second. It is equivalent to one weber per square meter. |
Nikola Tesla | Serbian-born American electrical engineer and physicist who discovered the principles of alternating current (1881) and invented numerous devices and procedures that were seminal to the development of radio and the harnessing of electricity. |
Weber | The International System unit of magnetic flux, equal to the flux that produces in a circuit of one turn an electromotive force of one volt, when the flux is uniformly reduced to zero within one second. |
microTesla, milliTesla, nanoTesla | micro = one millionth milli = one thousandth nano = one billionth |
Obfuscation Extraordinaire | Where |