March 21, 2011 How to Convert Metrics – The Easy Way!

In class on Friday we heard a story about a king. His name was King Henry and he loved to drink chocolate milk, so much that he wanted everyone, I mean everyone (bugs, animals, people) to all be able to drink chocolate milk. The only problem was there were not drinking glasses for everyone. The king drank his milk from a liter glass and that just was appropriate for the bugs of his kingdom or the giants. So he had his royal carpenter make glasses for everyone in the kingdom.

From large to small, this is the order of the glasses that were made by the royal carpenter.

Kilo, Hecto, Deka, Unit, Deci, Centi, Milli

To remember the correct order of the glasses the royal carpenter suggested the king say this phrase. “King Henry Does Usually Drink Chocolate Milk”

To convert metrics you need to “Follow the Yellow Brick Road” this is the chart I made for you on yellow paper. For example, if the problem is

3.4 km =  ________mm (You are to put your finger on kilo and then count the steps to land on milli. This will be the number of places you move the decimal point. Also remember the direction you were walking because this will be the direction you move the decimal.

K	H	D	U	D	C	M
KILO	HECTO	DEKA	UNIT	DECI	CENTI	MILLI
King	Henry	Does	Usually	Drink	Chocolate	Milk
			Liter Meter Grams

You will move the decimal point 6 places to the right to give you 3,400,000 mm

This is much different than the way your book teaches you

Another way to do this same conversion is to count the number of places you need to move and make it a power of 10. For example since we are moving 6 places this would be 10⁶. We can do this because each jump is a multiple of 10 (you multiply by 10 every box you move to) So you will multiply by 10⁶ or 1,000,000. To get your answer

When you are moving to the right you multiply

When you are moving to the left you divide

Homework - Worksheet 9D