[EdHolland]

This is interesting stuff... I am also a physics major, plus PhD, but we never learned the cm standard for self capacitance. One other I know of is thanks to collecting radio books. From a copy of the "Admiralty handbook of Wireless and Telegraphy" (in this case the British Admiralty) I learned of the Jar unit of capacitance, where 1 Farad = 9x10^8 Jars, or 1 Jar = 1111 pF. Wikipedia has the definition these days.