English

Noun

megafarad ‎(plural megafarads)

1. (physics, obsolete) A unit of quantity of electric charge; the quantity of electricity flowing through a one megohm resistor when driven by an electromotive force of one volt for one second.
   • 24 August 1872, William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, letter to James Clerk Maxwell:

     […] when electrotyping, electric light, &^c become commercial we may perhaps buy a microfarad or megafarad of electricity […]

   • 1874, Josiah Parsons Cooke, Principles of Chemical Philosophy, p. 575:

     What is the work done by a current of 5 Megafarads per second through a resistance of 10 Ohms?

   • 1876, Richard Evan Day, Exercises in Electrical and Magnetic Measurement, with Answers, p. 45:

     (6.) How many megafarads are contained in 5.32 metre-gramme-second units of current?

2. An improbably large unit of electrical capacitance equal to one million farads.
   • 1997, Mahesh Jain, S. Chand's Objective Physics for Engineering and Medical Entrance Examinations, p. 857:

     34. The capacitance unit of convenient size is (a) farad (b) microfarad (c) kilofarad (d) megafarad

   • 2002, Donald Fenna, A Dictionary of Weights, Measures, and Units, p. 87:

     Because of **** (now correctly the symbol for the massive megafarad) and **** having at some time been common symbols for microfarad, the millifarad (correctly ****) is rarely referred to […]

   • 2015, Rudy Rucker, The Ware Tetralogy, p. 345:

     Tomorrow he'd be sentenced to death by electrosheet, and couple of weeks after that, they'd put him in the electrocell with the two metal walls that were a megafarad capacitor, and then the great sheet of electricity would flash across, and then a janitor would come in and sweep Willy's ashes into a little plastic box to give to Mom and Dad.

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