Parts-per notation

"Parts per billion" redirects here. For the film, see Parts per Billion.
Fluorescein aqueous solutions, diluted from 10,000 to 1 parts-per-million in intervals of 10 fold dilution. At 1 ppm the solution is a very pale yellow. As the concentration increases the colour becomes a more vibrant yellow, then orange, with the final 10,000 ppm a deep red colour.

In science and engineering, the parts-per notation is a set of pseudo-units to describe small values of miscellaneous dimensionless quantities, e.g. mole fraction or mass fraction. Since these fractions are quantity-per-quantity measures, they are pure numbers with no associated units of measurement. Commonly used are parts-per-million (ppm, 10−6), parts-per-billion (ppb, 10−9), parts-per-trillion (ppt, 10−12) and parts-per-quadrillion (ppq, 10−15). This notation is not part of the International System of Units (SI) system and its meaning is ambiguous.