Have you ever tried to convert one metric unit to another??? It can get REALLY confusing sometimes! Well here is a little trick that helped my pupils get the answers quickly and correctly! Did you know that…King Henry Died By Drinking Chocolate Milk??

Well…he didn’t really!

You just need to remember this mnemonic and you will be able to convert from one unit to another in no time!

So, how does it work, you may ask?

It’s pretty simple. The first letter of each word stands for a prefix of a metric unit.

B is for the base unit.

We find the answers by moving the decimal point:

to the right <—— if we are converting from larger to smaller units

to the left ——-> if we are converting from smaller to larger units.

King Henry Died By Drinking Chocolate Milk

Kilo   Hecto   Deca   (Base)   Deci    Centi    Milli

km         hm      dam      m          dm       cm     mm

kg          hag      dag        g          dg         cg     mg

kl          hal         dal        l            dl          cl       ml

Now this may look complicated but believe me it is really easy! Let’s look at these examples:

Say you want to convert 54.6cm to mm. You look at the chart above and notice that mm is one place to the right. You move the decimal point one place to the right and get 546.0mm. That is the answer! That simple!

54.6cm = 546mm

Let’s look at something harder, say you have to convert 27.8g to kg. Look at the chart above and notice that kg are three places to the right of g, which means you move the decimal point 3 places to the right!

27.89kg = 0.02789g

And so on and so forth!

We found this trick so helpful and easy!

Did you find it helpful ?

Till next time….