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Convert Units Safely

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7 views

Convert Units Safely

Document

Uploaded by

jankiethebe22
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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How to Safely Convert From One Unit to Another

We can convert from km/h (kilometres per hour) to m/s (metres per second) like this:

A kilometre has 1000 meters, and an hour has 3600 seconds, so a kilometre per hour is:

• 1000 / 3600 = 0.277... m/s

How did I know to make it 1000 / 3600, and not 3600 / 1000 (the other way
around)?

The trick is to do the conversions as fractions!

Example 1:

Let's start with a simple example: convert 3 km to m (3 kilometres to metres). There


are 1000 m in 1 km, so the conversion is easy, but let's follow a system.

The system is:


• Write the conversion as a fraction
• Multiply
• Cancel any units that are both top and bottom

You can write the conversion as a fraction that equals 1:

1000 𝑚
= 1
𝟏 𝒌𝒎

And it is safe to multiply by 1 (does not affect the answer) so we can do this:

1000 𝑚 3000 𝑘𝑚.𝑚


3 km x =
𝟏 𝒌𝒎 𝟏 𝒌𝒎

The answer looks strange! But we aren't finished yet ... we can "cancel" any units that
are both top and bottom:

3000 𝑘𝑚.𝑚
= 3000 m
𝟏 𝒌𝒎

So, 3 km equals 3000 m. Well, we knew that, but I wanted to show you how to do
it systematically, so that when things get harder you will know what to do!

And the trick is to know that you will cancel when you finish, so make sure you write
the conversion the correct way around (so you can cancel afterwards).

Doing it wrong (with the conversion upside down) gets this:

1 𝑘𝑚 3 𝑘𝑚.𝑘𝑚
3 km × =
𝟏𝟎𝟎𝟎 𝒎 𝟏𝟎𝟎𝟎 𝒎

And that doesn't let us do any cancelling!

Example 2:

Let's use this method to solve the km/h to m/s conversion from the top of the page.
We will do it in two stages:

• from km/h (kilometres per hour) to m/h (metres per hour), then

• from m/h (metres per hour) to m/s (metres per second).

1. From km/h (kilometres per hour) to m/h (metres per hour)

1 𝑘𝑚 1000 𝑚 1000 𝑘𝑚.𝑚


× =
1ℎ 𝟏 𝒌𝒎 𝟏 𝒉.𝒌𝒎

Now "cancel out" any units that are both top and bottom:

1000 𝑘𝑚.𝑚 1000 𝑚


=
𝟏 𝒉.𝒌𝒎 𝟏𝒉

2. From m/h (meters per hour) to m/s (meters per second)

Now, to go from m/h (meters per hour) to m/s (meters per second) we put the "3600
seconds in an hour" conversion "upside down" because we want an "h" on top (so they
will cancel later):

1000 𝑚 1ℎ 1000 𝑚.ℎ


× =
𝟏𝒉 𝟑𝟔𝟎𝟎 𝒔 𝟏 𝒉.𝟑𝟔𝟎𝟎𝒔

Then "cancel out" any units that are both top and bottom:

1000 𝑚.ℎ 1000 𝑚


=
𝟏 𝒉.𝟑𝟔𝟎𝟎𝒔 𝟑𝟔𝟎𝟎𝒔

And so our anwer is:

1000 𝑚
= 0.2777 m/s
𝟑𝟔𝟎𝟎𝒔

Doing it wrong (with the 3600 seconds/hour the other way around) gets this:

1000 𝑚 3600 𝑠 1000 𝑚.3600 𝑠


× =
𝟏𝒉 𝟏𝒉 𝟏 𝒉.𝒉

And there is nothing to cancel!

Summary

The important points are:

• Write the conversion as a fraction (that equals one)

• Multiply it out (leaving all units in the answer)

• Cancel any units that are both top and bottom

Note: Converting of units can only be performed with same physical quantities e.g. kilometre to
metre, miles to kilometre, pounds to kilograms, seconds to hours, etc.Sourced from
https://www.mathsisfun.com/measure/unit-conversion-method.html

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