Try some yourself
Activity 17
A person’s height is given as 1.65 m. What is this in centimetres?
Answer
1.65 m is 165 cm (multiply by 100).
Activity 18
Try the following conversions:
(a) Express 675 mm in centimetres.
(b) Express 45.2 km in metres.
(c) Express 3.5 kg in grams.
(d) Express 167.2 mm in metres.
Answer
(a) To convert millimetres to centimetres, divide by 10. So 675 mm is 67.5 cm.
(b) 45.2 km is 45 200 m (multiply by 1000).
(c) 3.5 kg is 3500 g (multiply by 1000).
(d) 167.2 mm is 0.1672 m (divide by 1000).
Activity 19
A kitchen unit is 1200 mm long, 600 mm high and 350 mm deep. Write these measurements in metres.
Answer
To convert millimetres to metres, divide by a thousand, i.e. move the numbers three places to the right in the place value table. In terms of metres, the kitchen unit is then 1.2 m long, 0.6 m high and 0.35 m deep.
We will now provide more detail on converting units using interactive activities.