Cycle per second Cycle per second The cycle per second was a once-common English name for the unit of frequency now known as the hertz (Hz). The plural form was typically used, often written cycles per second, cycles/second, c.p.s., c/s, ~, or, ambiguously, just cycles. The term comes from the fact that sound waves have a frequency measurable in their number of oscillations, or "cycles", per second. With the organization of the International System of Units in 1960, the cycle per second was officially replaced by the hertz, or reciprocal second, "s" or "1/s". Symbolically, "cycle per second" units are "cycle/second", while hertz
International System of Units and derived units may be used to express other derived units. For example, the SI unit of force is the newton (N), the SI unit of pressure is the pascal (Pa)—and the pascal can be defined as one newton per square metre (N/m). Prefixes are added to unit names to produce multiples and sub-multiples of the original unit. All of these are integer powers of ten, and above a hundred or below a hundredth all are integer powers of a thousand. For example, "kilo-" denotes a multiple of a thousand and "milli-" denotes a multiple of a thousandth, so there