Welcome to a presentation on metric unit conversions.
The goal of this video is to convert from one metric unit of measure to another.
And we'll be focusing on length, mass and capacity.
The metric system is widely used by most of the world because it is based on powers of ten.
And this allows for easy conversion between smaller and larger units.
The United States still uses the standard system, the use of the metric system has increased.
Let's go ahead and take a look at length first. The basic unit of length is the meter.
Which is just over 1 yard and originally this was intended to be 110 millionth
of the distance from the earth's equator to the North Pole.
But in 1983 it was defined as the distance traveled,
by light in a complete vacuum in this very small fraction of a second.
The basic unit of measure for mass is the gram.
And 1 gram is the mass a cubic centimeter of
water, there is often confusion between mass and weight.
Mass is the measurement of the amount of matter something contains.
While weight is the measurement of the pull of gravity of an object. So as a result the mass of an object doesn't change.
When an objects location changes while weight does change with location.
So if you were to weigh yourself at a low elevation versus a high elevation it would be a slight change in the weight, but not in the mass.
And for capacity the basic unit of measure is the liter. And in a liter is equal to 1,000 cubic centimeters.
Okay let's go ahead and talk about how we're gonna do these conversions
What I want you to notice about this table is the basic unit of measure is in the middle whether we're dealing with length, capacity or mass.
To the right we have smaller units and to the left we have larger units.
And because the metric system is based on powers 10.
A decimeter, a deciliter and decigram, is one tenth of these basic units of measure.
And a centimeter, centiliter and centigram is one-hundredth of these basic units of measure.
To the left a decameter, decliter and decagram would be ten of these basic units of measure.
If it has a prefix of hecto, it would represent a hundred of these basic units.
And if it has a prefix of kilo it would represent one thousand of these basic units of measure.
So because this is based on powers of 10, to convert between different units of measure, we need to multiply or divide by powers of 10.
But an easy way of doing that would be just to move the decimal point a certain number of places to the left or to the right based upon the conversion.
So lets take a look at some specific examples on how we're gonna do this.
If we want to convert kilometers to meters, we will first identified given units of measure in the table
And then identify the unit and measured we want to convert to.
In number 1 we want to convert from kilometers to meters.
So we're going from a larger unit to a smaller unit.
Notice were moving one, two, three columns to the right which means we can multiply by 10 to the power three.
Or just move the decimal point three places to the right.
So we start with 6.3 and move the decimal point three places to the right.
So one, two, three, notice we did not have enough digits so we do have to add two zero's to make the number 6,300.
So 6.3 kilometers is equal to 6300 meters.
On number two, we're converting 62,300 centimeters to hectometers lets identify those two columns.
Here is the centimeter column and here is the hectometer column. So now we're moving from smaller units to larger units.
Notice were moving one, two, three, four columns to the left so we could either divide by 10 to the power four.
Or just move the decimal point for places to the left.
We start with 62,300, which means the decimal point would be here, move it four places to the left.
One, two, three, four we have 6.23 hectometers.
So as you can see if you have this table handy and you know your abbreviations for the different types units the conversions are very straightforward.
Let's take a look at two mass conversions now you'll notice it'll be exactly the same idea.
So we're gonna identify the grams column and the kilograms column.
The grams would be right here in the middle and we're converting to kilograms.
So notice we're moving one, two, three columns to the left this time.
Which means we could divide by ten to the third or just move the decimal point three places to the left.
So we start with thirty seven thousand two hundred.
which means the decimal point would be there move it to the left three places.
One, two, three, we have thirty seven-point two kilograms.
Now we're converting hectograms to decigrams. So we're starting here and converting to here.
So we're moving one, two, three columns to the right.
That means we need to multiply by 2 to the 3rd or just the decimal point to the right three places.
So we have 1.73 move it to the right three places, we have one, two, three.
We're missing one digit so we add a zero we have 1,730 decigrams
And lets take a look at a couple examples that involve capacity or volume.
Number one we're converting liters to milliliters.
So we're starting here and moving to milliliters.
So we're going from larger units to smaller units, we're gonna multiply by 10 to the power of 3 or just move the decimal point to the right three places.
So we have 93.7, moving this decimal point to the right three places.
We have one, two, three, were missing two digits so we're gonna add two zeros.
And the result would be 93,700 milliliters.
And this last example we're converting from centiliters to kiloliters.
So we're converting from here to here.
That's one, two, three, four, five columns to the left so we move the decimal five places to the left.
So we start with 62,300, which means the decimal point would be here.
So we now move the decimal point five places one, two, three, four, five.
So we have point six two three kiloliters.
That's pretty much it for converting length, capacity and mass using the metric system.
As you can see from these examples it is very important to become familiar with this table;
So we can do the conversions quickly and easily. I'm gonna go ahead and end this video,
with the table that does do some comparison between the American and the metric system.
So if you're not familiar with the metric system you can get a better idea how these measurements compare.
So you may want to pause the video and take a look at this.
Hope you found this video helpful. Thank you for watching!