This math skill involves converting measurements from larger to smaller metric units through an intermediate base unit. The skill teaches understanding and applying metric prefixes to accurately perform conversions across different unit scales within the metric system.
Converting from larger metric units to smaller
Test your understanding of converting from larger metric units to smaller by practicing it! Work through the below exercises to use it in practice.
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Let's convert 6.3 decameters to centimeters. We'll do it as a two step process, converting to and from the base unit of meters. Once you know how to work with metric prefices on one type of measurement, like meters for length, you can use them on any metric unit like grams, or liters.
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First we look at the prefix on each unit. We are converting from deca to meters, which is the base unit. Deca means 10, and since meters is the base unit, there is no power of ten that we need to think of there.
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So 6.3 decameters is 63 meters. Now that we have our measurement in the base units, we can convert further to get centimeters.
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Centi means one one hundredth, and we are converting from meters, which are larger, to centimeters, which are smaller, so one meter is 100 centimeters.
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Multiplying our 63 meters, which is the same as our original 6.3 decameters, by another 100, we get 6300 centimeters as our answer.