Metric Capacity Conversions

Be a Liter Leader

Liters are the metric unit for capacity. Unlike the standard version where you have multiple names for units, all metric capacity units end in liter. Think of a common thing that you might find as a liter here in the United States. Bottles of soda are commonly packaged as a liter. Outside of the United States, you would find gasoline measured in liters rather than gallons.

Metric Capacity Units

Metric Capacity Conversion

Unlike standard units where it might feel like you are jumping through hoops to reach your end goal, metric conversions are more straight-forward.

Look at the above chart. The line reads that there are 1,000 liters in one kiloliter, 100 liters in one hectoliter, and 10 liters in one dekaliter. Conversely, there are ten deciliters in one liter, 100 centiliters in one liter, and 1,000 milliliters in one liter.

Solving Metric Conversions

Rather than being asked questions similar to the standard conversions, metric conversions will be more like this:

Meg bought a liter of cola from the supermarket. She drank 300 mL of the cola when she got home. How much of the liter does she have left?

Since the question tells you how much she drank in milliliters, convert the liter into milliliters. Therefore, Meg drank 300 mL of 1,000mL. She has 700 mL left in the bottle. Notice that the question didn’t ask how many milliliters would be left. The question asked how much of the liter would be left. In this case, divide 700 by 1,000. There is 0.7 L of the cola left to be consumed.