A unit of weight or mass equal to 1,000 grams, used in the metric system.
From French 'kilogramme,' combining 'kilo-' (from Greek 'chilioi,' meaning thousand) with 'gramme' (from Greek 'gramma,' meaning small weight). Created during the French Revolution in the 1790s as part of the metric system designed to replace older, inconsistent measurements.
The kilogram is literally the last physical artifact that defines a measurement—for over 100 years, scientists measured kilograms against the actual 'International Prototype Kilogram,' a cylinder of platinum in a vault in Paris, and only recently switched to defining it mathematically because no physical object is stable enough!
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