How does metric system work

Meters measure length, grams measure mass , and liters measure volume. Adding a prefix to a unit of measurement makes the unit larger or smaller. To do that, we have to know there are 5, feet in one mile. Then, we need to remember that twelve inches make a foot. In the Metric System, you just have to remember the prefixes. Here are a few of the most common prefixes and what they stand for:. How does this work? If you add kilo- to a unit of measurement , that makes it one thousand times bigger.

A kilogram is one thousand grams. A kiloliter is one thousand liters. A kilometer is… You guessed it! One thousand meters. You can also make measurements smaller. If you add centi- to a unit , it makes it one-hundredth of that unit. Have you ever heard of a centimeter? Likewise, a centigram is one-hundredth of a gram, and a centiliter is one-hundredth of a liter. There are many other prefixes we can use in the Metric System. Have you ever heard of a megabyte?

The prefix mega- means one million, so a megabyte is one million bytes. If we told you the prefix giga- means one billion, how many bytes do you think a gigabyte is? Are you ready to jump into the Metric System? Many people around the world use the system.

A great way to start is by practicing conversions on ordinary items. If a can of soda contains milliliters, how many liters is that? If one metric ton is 1, kilograms, then what does it weigh in grams? Once you get started, maneuvering the Metric System just gets easier! Hi, izzy. And, don't forget, you can always search Wonderopolis on your own!

They're actually different, Anonymous. There's a great explanation HERE. This so cool I did not know this. I have one question how do we get technology to work?? Like we use but how? Are you talking about how we create new technology inventions, QoE? If so, drop that question into the Wonder Bank! We are undergoing some spring clearing site maintenance and need to temporarily disable the commenting feature.

Thanks for your patience. You can start thinking metrically the same way. Identify reference objects.

You probably got a basic idea of different weights and measures using the Imperial system by equating them to the size of things you saw every day. You can use the same principles to better understand the metric system. An egg weighs about 50 grams. For volume, think about the size of a liter bottle of soft drink.

Label items around your house. To reinforce thinking in terms of meters instead of Imperial measurements, measure the size or weight of different items around your house.

Start with items that you look at or use on a regular basis. Over time, you'll come to associate that object with that measurement in your head. For example, suppose you have a cookie jar that is 40 centimeters tall. You label the cookie jar with the measurement.

If someone mentions something being 50 centimeters long, you might have a good idea of how long that thing is because you can add another 10 centimeters to the image of the cookie jar in your head. Find metric measures for familiar distances.

Especially if you travel internationally, you'll need to understand kilometers and meters so you can find your way around.

Start by learning distances to places you frequent. For example, maybe you work at a store 12 kilometers from your house. If you're traveling overseas and you're told your hotel is 10 kilometers from the airport, you can compare that distance to the distance between your home and your job to decide whether you can walk that distance or need to call a cab.

Use metric measurements in the kitchen. The kitchen can be one of the easiest places to start incorporating the metric system into your everyday life, especially if you do a lot of cooking. Most cookbooks include both Imperial and metric measurements for ingredients. Replace all your measuring cups and spoons with their metric equivalents. When you cook, use those measures exclusively — try not to think about what that amount would be under the Imperial measurement system.

Focus on metric measurements at the grocery store. The grocery store is another place where it's easy to work on thinking metrically, because most food packages include metric and Imperial measurements on the label. Method 3. Think in tens. The metric system simplifies units of measurement by converting between larger and smaller units using multiples of ten.

Each larger unit is exactly 10 times larger than the previous unit. For example, there are 12 inches in a foot. To convert feet to inches, you must multiply by However, since the metric system is arranged in multiples of ten, there's no complex math involved in converting metric measurements.

Learn the order of the prefixes. To create a metric unit, you add a prefix to the basic unit. These prefixes are ordered from largest to smallest: kilo-, hecta-, deka-, basic unit , deci-, centi-, milli-. Each prefix corresponds to one multiple of Divide to convert smaller units to larger units. If you have an unwieldy amount of smaller units, you can divide the large number by a magnitude of 10 and express the amount using larger units.

This makes your figures cleaner and simpler. It would be a lot simpler and easier to understand if you said the bottle contained 2 liters of juice.

You're probably familiar with the size of a 2-liter bottle. To convert 2, milliliters to liters, divide 2, by 10 three times, since milli- is three places from the base unit. When going from a unit larger than the base unit to one smaller than the base unit, simply count the number of steps between the two units. Each step is another multiple of Multiply to convert larger units to smaller units. Since there are tens more of a smaller unit than there are of a larger unit, you need to multiply by a magnitude of 10 to express a larger unit as a smaller unit.

This may require you to convert a larger unit down to a smaller unit in some contexts. For example, suppose you are making a list of restaurants within 1 kilometer of your house. The farthest restaurant is 1 kilometer away, but all the other restaurants are a number of meters away.

Convert the distance of the farthest restaurant to meters by multiplying 1 by 10 three times, since kilo- is three steps away from the base unit, meter. Remember, centimeters make a meter. So if you are centimeters, for example; you are 1. Not Helpful 16 Helpful The speed is measured in kilometers per hour, as opposed to miles per hour. You'd have to multiply a car's speed in MPH by 1. Not Helpful 13 Helpful Not Helpful 9 Helpful Not Helpful 15 Helpful Multiply by The root "centi" means There are cents in a dollar if that helps.

If you wanted to find the area of the field, you would need to multiply its length by its width. But you don't just multiply the numbers in front of the units; you multiply the units, too.

So, the math would look like this:. Notice that the final unit is a meter times a meter, which results in what metrologists , or measuring experts, call a square meter. Now let's say you have a cube measuring 1 meter on each side. If you wanted to find the volume of the cube, you would need to multiply three dimensions -- length, width and height. Here's the math :. Notice again that the base unit gets multiplied along with the numerical factor.

In this case, it's a meter times a meter times a meter, resulting in a cubic meter. Also observe that when the numerical factor is 1, you can drop the number and simply show the unit. Metrologists call this a coherent unit. Area and volume are derived units because they are defined in terms of an SI base unit and a specific quantity equation.

The table lists some of the most common derived units. A few derived units are significant enough to have earned special SI names and symbols. Force serves as a great example. Isaac Newton defined force as the mass of an object times its acceleration.

In all, there are 22 derived SI units with special names and symbols. Some of the most important ones appear in the accompanying table. Finally, it's important to know that a few units are not officially part of the metric system but make frequent appearances. As such, the SI accepts these units for use with its family of measures. Some of the common time quantities -- the minute, hour and day -- fall into this category, as do the metric ton and astronomical unit.

All of these units, however, can be defined according to SI base units. For example, a day is 86, seconds. And an astronomical unit AU -- a unit of length equal to the mean distance between the Earth and the sun -- is 1. Of course, a base unit may be too large or too small to describe an object adequately. In the SI, making units larger and smaller requires nothing more than adding a prefix. We'll cover those on the next page. As we've hammered home by now, each physical quantity -- length, mass, volume and so on -- is represented by a specific SI unit.

Sometimes, though, the base units have limitations when they're used to measure very small or very large objects. For example, let's say you wanted to measure the length of an ant. Expressed in the SI base unit, an ant's length is 0. Now imagine expressing the width of a human hair or an atom in meters: Your numbers would become smaller and smaller -- and increasingly cumbersome. The same holds true for large measurements. To get around this issue, the General Conference on Weights and Measures adopted a series of prefix names and symbols to designate the decimal multiples and submultiples of SI units.

In , enough prefixes existed to cover multiples ranging from 10 12 to 10 But over the years, new prefixes entered the system to accommodate ever larger and smaller values. The accompanying table lists some of the approved prefix names and symbols. Now we can go back to our examples to see the advantage of using a prefix system based on powers of An ant's length may be 0. To convert meters to millimeters, you simply multiply the length by 1,, or move the decimal point to the right three spaces.

That tells us that an ant is 3 millimeters 3 mm from its head to its abdomen. You'd be much better off measuring such a great distance in kilometers. To convert meters to kilometers, you simply divide the distance by 1,, or move the decimal to the left three spaces. That makes your final distance 4, kilometers 4, km. All of the prefixes operate in a similar way. The one curveball you need to worry about is the kilogram, the only SI base unit whose name and symbol include a prefix.

You might be tempted to add a prefix to kilogram microkilogram, for example , but that would be incorrect. Instead, you should attach prefix names to the unit name "gram" to represent larger and smaller values of an object's mass. So, for example, 10 -6 kilograms would be equal to 1 milligram 1 mg. Armed with the SI units and prefixes, you have everything you need to start measuring metric. In fact, most of the world has been doing so for decades. Up next, we'll discover why nations have enthusiastically embraced the modern metric system and what can happen when a country yeah, we're looking at you, America fails to make the switch.

If taking a tour of SI units and prefixes hasn't convinced you of the metric system's advantages, then tackle this exercise: convert 5 miles to inches. In your head. Even if you remember how many feet are in a mile 5, and how many inches are in a foot 12 , you still have some complex arithmetic to do.