How to Convert Units of Measure

This video shows how to convert one unit of measure to another using a chart.

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transcript:

Welcome to Your Tutor Online Video Podcast. In today’s lesson, I will teach you how to convert any unit of measure to any number, as long as you know the conversion ratio.

I will speak for myself here and say, “I have a hard time remembering tons of different formulas in order to convert units whether to multiply or divide even if I do know the unit of measure.”

If you use the method I am about to show you, you will not be confused anymore and you will get the correct answer 100 percent of the time. Let us say we want to convert 25 centimeters to millimeters. Well, we know that there are 100 centimeters in 1 meter. We also know that there are 1000 millimeters in 1 meter.

But it is a little hard to figure out how to put those two together to go from centimeters to millimeters. No problem. First, let us set up a chart that looks something like this. It is going to have two rows and we are just going to draw one column for now. In very top left spot, we are going to put the number we want to convert 25 and also very important is we want to include the units 25 centimeters.

Now, we already know that there are 100 centimeters in 1 meter just like we said before and 1000 millimeters in 1 meter. If we go from centimeters to meters, then meters to millimeters we have our problem solved.

We are going to draw one more column for now. We are going to put our first conversion ratio into this column. To determine whether which number goes on top and which one goes on the bottom, we are going to look our original the centimeters and opposite the side is for the other centimeters that is going to go.

So centimeters are on top here, centimeters will go on the bottom down here. 100 is what the centimeters and 1 meter goes on top. We are going to repeat the process one more time to go from meters to millimeters and that goes in this last column. Meters is on top here, so we want to do the opposite to put meter on the bottom over here and 1000 millimeters goes on top.

To make sure that you set the chart up correctly, we are going to make sure that all the units cancel out except for the unit of measure we are converting to, so we are just going to treat this chart like we were multiplying fractions together. Anything in the numerator can cancel out anything in the denominator.

Centimeters is on top. Centimeters is on the bottom, so they cancel out. Meter and meter cancel out and we are left with millimeters. As long as the only unit we are left with is on top and it is not crossed out, we set up the chart correctly.

Now, it is just a simple multiplying fraction’s problem. Before you get started, you want to make sure that you cancelled out anything that you cancelled out. I see that there is 100 in the denominator and 100 in the numerator, so we will simplify that. Now, all we have is 25 times 10 is 250. Since the only unit that is not cancelled is millimeters, final answer is 250 millimeters.

I will show you just one more really use the example, how many pounds is 48 ounces? We are going to set up our chart. We are going to put 48 here, 48 ounces with the units. You might need to look it up. You can look it up in a dictionary if you need to ounces to pounds. We know you will found out that 16 ounces is equal to 1 pound.

Since we have this conversion, we are going to put 16 on the bottom so that the ounces will cancel out. We are going to pound on top. Now, we should see ounces cancelled out and this 48 divided by 16 which is equal to 3 pounds.

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I will see you next time. Thanks for watching. Class dismissed.