Normally each physical quantity requires a unit or standard for its specification so it appears that there must be as many units as there are physical quantities. However, it is not so. It has been found that if in mechanics we choose arbitrarily units of any three physical quantities we can express the units of all other physical quantities in mechanics in terms of these. Arbitrarily the physical quantities mass, length and time are chosen for this purpose. So any unit of mass, length and time in mechanics is called a fundamental, absolute or base unit. Other units which can be expressed in terms of fundamental units, are called derived units. For example light year or km is a fundamental unit as it is a unit of length while s-1, m2 or kg/m are derived units as these are derived from units of time, mass and length.
System of units :
more...