Try it
F1e-7
mF0.0001
µF0.1
nF100
pF100000
Understand the result
What's going on
Capacitance is measured in farads, but a farad is an enormous unit - most real capacitors are millions or billions of times smaller. In practice you’ll almost always see µF, nF, or pF printed on the component, so converting between them is a daily occurrence, not an edge case.
The formula
F = value × unit_factor
Where unit_factor is 10⁻³ for mF, 10⁻⁶ for µF, 10⁻⁹ for nF, 10⁻¹² for pF.
Show the derivation, mnemonic, and worked example
Build it up
Every prefix is just a power of ten away from the farad: milli is a thousandth, micro is a millionth, nano is a billionth, pico is a trillionth. Convert into farads first as a common baseline, then convert back out to whichever unit you actually need.
Worked example
Worked example
100 nF
100 × 10⁻⁹ = 1 × 10⁻⁷ F
= 0.1 µF = 100,000 pF
