The Angstrom (= 10[sup]-10[/sup] meters) used to be so ubiquitous that it had it’s own symbol. Å But nowadays everyone uses nanometers. If it’s a desire to stick with a standardized nomenclature (mili- micro- nano- ), why did they use Angstroms in the first place?
I use Angstroms all the time to describe bond lengths in chemical structures. I can’t imagine using anything else.
Sorry for the slight hijack here, but one of my enduring sources of pleasure is observing how American professionals who work in the scientific fields of engineering, and chemistry, and physics etc are all universally capable of working in both metric and imperial measurements without the slightest bit of struggle. I often read threads by Americans who know nothing of metric, and the arguements for why it’s such a piss poor measurement system amuse me. Clearly, people who work in the sciences are capable of intermingling both Imperial and Metric measurements with the greatest of ease. I like seeing that.
Back on subject, I recently heard Angstroms used to describe the molecular thickness of engine oil being used in ultra fine crankshaft bearings. Obviously it’s still being bandied about.
From what I’ve seen, angstroms have pretty much gone by the wayside. I haven’t seen them used at all in any used in a recently published general chemistry or organic chemistry textbook.
In my experience, however, the more advanced the textbook, the more likely is to find old-fashioned units being used.
The Angstrom was introduced as a measure of the atomic radius. 1 Angstrom is roughly the diameter of the Hydrogen atom.
The Angstrom unit is still used in phsyics and chemistry, but not so much in engineering. Engineers like to use “engineering notation” (surprise!) as you noted (mili, micro, nano).
General Chemistry by Chang, 2005 publishing has many references to Angstroms, as does Principles of Biochemistry by Lehninger.
My teachers use them as a unit of measure as well.
Do you often read recently published general or organic chemistry textbooks, and when/if you do read them, do you take specific notice of them? Seems like something that would easily be missed. (Not to mention in low level classes there isn’t much need of mentioning it often, just when it is necessary to mention distances)
I don’t know how often they USED to mention angstroms, but they still do in MY chemistry and biochemistry classes.
We are? Whenever I have a problem stated in those monstrous units, my first step is always to convert them to metric. If, at the end, an answer is desired in American units (or Imperial ones, though I can’t imagine why an American would ever encounter those), I convert back.
I think Boo Boo Foo was referring to American units when he said Imperial, since they use the same names and are, for most people’s use, pretty much the same (save the liquid measures: pint, quart and gallon).
And yes, I’m quite sure you know. I was merely making the point in case people reading the thread were confused about either the reference to “Imperial” units, or to your distinction between Imperial and American units.
We used Angstroms in astronomy 101 (only a few years ago).
Isn’t that like designing a hydroelectric dam, using gills?
Not when you’re talking about wavelengths.
…of light. (I assume you mean!)
Or radio.
Nobody measures radio wavelengths in Ansgtroms. That’s like measuring stellar distances in millimeters: Sure, you can do it, but the numbers get ridiculous.
I would suspect that we’re talking about emission spectra of stellar bodies.
Ah, noted.
Sorry, Q.E.D., you’re right. I got confused with electro-magnetic in general.
Cut me some slack, it’s been five years and I’m a humanities major 
Your average american auto mechanic is also used to working with metric measurements.
This is KOML, broadcasting at 104.3 Gazzilion Angstroms. 
What do you mean “greatest of ease”? It’s a constant source of annoyance, errors and wasted time. And like Chronos, I’d do calculations in SI and only convert the final result back if necessary. Anyway this isn’t relevant to this thread, since Angstrom is a metric unit.
I’m an astronomer, and many of my colleagues still use Angstrom to describe wavelengths of UV and visible light. But in the past year I quit using it and switched to nanometers. The strongest motivation for me is the difficulty in getting the Angstrom symbol to display properly on the computer. It’s a pain to remember how to display this special character on half a dozen programs (data analysis programs used for plotting graphs, typesetting programs, etc). It’s even worse when we need to prepare journal articles - articles are submitted electronically, so we need to create PDF, PS or Word files that print properly on any computer.