Can you explain to me what the metric ladder is?

Posted by admin on April 5, 2010 at 9:13 pm · Under answer

Everything online I’ve found isn’t very helpful and not understandable. My Chem teacher wasn’t very helpful with the lesson today and I have to do an explanation on what it is, how its used, and give an example. Can you please help and explain it to me?

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1 Comment

  1. I'm with Stupid said,

    April 5, 2010 @ 9:39 pm

    Metric Ladder refers to the system of prefixes used in metric units:

    Tera – 1,000,000,000,000 (10^12)
    Giga – 1,000,000,000 (10^9)
    Mega – 1,000,000 (10^6)
    Kilo – 1,000 (10^3)
    Hecto – 100 (10^2)
    Deka – 10 (10^1)
    No Prefix – Base unit – gram, liter, meter (10^0)
    deci – 1/10 (10^-1)
    centi – 1/100 (10^-2)
    milli – 1/1000 (10^-3)
    micro – 1/1,000,000 (10^-6)
    nano – 1/1,000,000,000 (10^-9)
    pico – 1/1,000,000,000,000 (10^-12)

    So it is very easy to convert from one unit to another.
    e.g.:
    1024 grams = 1.024 kilograms.
    1 kg = 10^3 grams, so
    1024 grams × 1 kg/10^3 gm = 1024 ×10^-3 = 1.024 kg.

    This takes advantage of the fact that adding a positive exponent is the act of multiplying, and adding a negative (subtracting) exponent is the act of multiplying by the reciprocal (division):
    • Negative exponent = move decimal to left
    • Positive exponent = move decimal to right

    They say once you get used to it, you wouldn’t do it any other way.

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