Storheten

Storheten is a Swedish term for a property that can be measured or compared, commonly translated as magnitude or quantity. In science and engineering, storheter are physical quantities that have a magnitude and, in many cases, a unit. Examples include length, mass, time, temperature, amount of substance, and luminous intensity. Some storheter are scalar, having only magnitude, while others are vector quantities, which also have direction. In the International System of Units (SI), storheter are categorized as grundstorheter (base quantities) and ledstorheter (derived quantities).

In everyday Swedish, storhet also denotes significance or importance, as in something’s storhet or its importance.

Etymology: storhet derives from stor, meaning big, with the suffix -het forming an abstract noun.

See also: quantity, magnitude, SI units, base quantity (grundstorhet), derived quantity (ledstorhet), scalar, vector.