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The rad is a unit of absorbed radiation dose, defined as 1 rad = 0.01 Gy = 0.01 J/kg. It was originally defined in CGS units in 1953 as the dose causing 100 ergs of energy to be absorbed by one gram of matter. The material absorbing the radiation can be human tissue or silicon microchips or any other medium.
It has been replaced by the gray in SI derived units, but is still used in the United States, although this is "strongly discouraged" in Chapter 5.2 of the Guide to the SI, which was written and published by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology. However, the numerically equivalent SI unit, the centigray, is widely used to report absorbed doses within radiotherapy. The roentgen, used to quantify the radiation exposure, may be related to the corresponding absorbed dose by use of the F-factor.