Metrication in the United States There are no U.S. customary units for electric current, potential difference, or charge since these concepts were developed after the international adoption of metric in science. The metric units ampere, volt, ohm and coulomb are the only units used. The SI term hertz has replaced the term "cycles per second" as a unit of frequency. Energy is often measured in watt hours, BTUs, therms or calories rather than the SI joule. Residential and commercial electrical energy use is metered and billed in kilowatt hours, kW·h, as in most metric countries. Force measurements regularly use the pound instead of the SI
Imaginary unit "imaginary" is used because there is no real number having a negative square. There are two complex square roots of , namely and , just as there are two complex square roots of every real number other than zero, which has one double square root. In contexts where is ambiguous or problematic, or the Greek is sometimes used (see ). In the disciplines of electrical engineering and control systems engineering, the imaginary unit is normally denoted by instead of , because is commonly used to denote electric current. For the history of the imaginary unit, see . The imaginary number