How do you convert 872.4 mm to centimeters?
1 Answer
87.24 cm
Explanation:
In the Metric System, conversions between different measures are based on the number 10.
Let's take this problem for example and first see that we start with a measure in "mm", or millimetres. The prefix, "milli-", means "a thousandth of", or "made up of 1000 parts".
In 1 metre, there are 1000 millimetres.
We want to convert to cm, or centimetres. The prefix, "centi-", means "a hundredth of", or "made up of 100 parts".
In 1 metre, there are 100 centimetres.
We can do this conversion in a couple of different ways. We can do it as a ratio (since 100 centimetres is the same as 1000 millimetres, we can say):
since we know
Notice how the decimal moved one place to the left? That's another way we can do conversions - simply move the decimal the correct number of places in the correct direction.
