Metric Conversions of Capacity

TenMarks teaches you how to easily convert metric units of capacity.

Metric Conversions of Capacity In this lesson, let’s learn how to convert using metric units of capacity. We’ll do three problems and this is the table that we’re going to use which shows us that one centiliter is equal to 10 milliliters. A liter is 100 centiliters or 1000 milliliters. Let’s do the first one, 140 milliliters. We need to express that in centiliters. A milliliter is a smaller unit compared to centiliters. So, I will divide it by the conversion factor, milliliter, centiliters, the conversion factor is 10. One centiliter equals 10 milliliters. So what do I do? I take this and divide it by the conversion factor to get 14 centiliters. That was easy. Let’s try the second one, which is four liters, how many milliliters is it? Well, liter is a bigger unit than milliliters. So, I’m going to a smaller unit which means I’ll multiply it by the conversion factor, which means four times—what’s the conversion factor between liters and milliliter? 1000 equals 4000 milliliters, that’s the second one. So the third one here, we need to add two liters plus two milliliters plus two centiliters and I need to express the answer in milliliters. So, since the answer has to be in milliliters, let’s convert all of these to milliliters. What’s two liters in milliliter? If one liter is 1000, two liter is 2000 milliliters. This is already in milliliters plus two centiliters. A centiliter is 10, so two centiliters is 20 milliliters. Now, we can add them, 2000 + 20 + 2 is 2022 milliliters. That’s the answer. Key to remember is we have to convert all of these units into the right unit which is milliliters and then simply add.