Thread: Quick Conversion question

Thanks

qbkr21

Originally Posted by qbkr21

Thanks

qbkr21

and

thus



we just keep replacing the units with their equivalents

or, to do it your way:

RE:

Where did I go wrong doing it my way? I'd like to figure out how the exponents in Scientific Notation correlate to the problem. If the sign changes if goes on top or bottom. Can you help me with this?

qbkr21

What if we were given meters and told to turn them into Angstroms; would the 1.0 X 10^-10 become 1.0 X 10^10 since it would be put on the bottom?

RE:

Originally Posted by qbkr21

RE:

Where did I go wrong doing it my way? I'd like to figure out how the exponents in Scientific Notation correlate to the problem. If the sign changes if goes on top or bottom. Can you help me with this?

qbkr21

to take something from the top and put it in the bottom, or vice versa, we change all the exponents to their negatives. but that is not necessary here. in the denominator we only have 1's. so we just multiply all the numerators together.

to answer your first question: yes, the negative sign stays on top. it is not necessary to move it to the bottom, so don't worry about it. moving it to the bottom will mess you up

Originally Posted by qbkr21

RE:

i gave you the conversion. 1 meter is nanometers. you had that wrong. your exponent should be 9 not -9. a nanometer is smaller than a meter

RE:

So would

1 Meter = 1 X 10^2 centimeters?

Originally Posted by qbkr21

RE:

So would

1 Meter = 1 X 10^2 centimeters?

yes. 1 meter is 100 centimeters

Jhevon for some reason I have all of my units mixed up. Maybe you can help. Here are the units that I was given, can you correct them so that I can avoid future error?

Originally Posted by qbkr21

Jhevon for some reason I have all of my units mixed up. Maybe you can help. Here are the units that I was given, can you correct them so that I can avoid future error?

this has meters on the right and (prefix)meters on the left. this table is correct. in what we did, the coefficient of meter was 1. that is not the case in this table. you have to solve for 1 meter to do our problem

example: the table says,



this is correct, but we want 1 meter = something nanometers. multiply both sides by to obtain

When we convert do we usually try and get meters by itself?

RE:

Originally Posted by qbkr21

When we convert do we usually try and get meters by itself?

not always. in this problem it was convenient though

we avoided having anything in the denominator that we would otherwise have

Originally Posted by qbkr21

RE:

yes, that is good

or you can write it as