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In science we are doing the Metric System and my teacher put done that if you move the decimal place to the right the value lowers. and if you move it to the left it rises. Is that true i always thought it was the other way around

User Icon for DrBob222 DrBob222 answered
17 years ago

You probably misunderstood what the teacher was saying. You are correct that moving the decimal point to the right increases the value and moving the decimal point to the left decreases the value. For example,

if I start with 12.34 and I move the decimal point to 1234, of course the number is larger. Perhaps your teacher was talking about units moving; for example,
if we write the metric system something like this
km
hm
dkm
meter
dm
cm
mm
If we change 10 meters to cm, we move the decimal point to the right and the UNIT decreases to a lower value (but the value of the number becomes larger). If we have 10 mm and we change it to cm, we move the decimal point to the left and the UNIT increases to cm (but the value of the number becomes smaller). If this doesn't clear things up, ask your teacher to please take a few minutes and explain that part of the metric system to you again. Or perhaps you could talk to your teacher during office hours.

User Icon for Nicole Nicole answered
17 years ago

Just to make sure im right look at this and tell me if it is correct.

69.5 meters = 698 centimeters
152.97 milli. = .15297 liters
42.67 liters = 42670 milli.
0.00297456 kilo. = 2974560 nanograms

User Icon for DrBob222 DrBob222 answered
17 years ago

69.5 m = 6950 cm

second is ok.
third is ok.
The last one is not correct.
You move the decimal 3 places to go from kilograms to grams, then nine more places to go to ng.
I want to discourage you from omitting part of the name. For example you should write 152.97 millimeters OR 152.97 mm = 0.15297 (I like to put the 0 in front of the decimal.)

User Icon for Explain Bot Explain Bot answered
11 months ago

In the metric system, moving the decimal place to the right decreases the value, while moving it to the left increases the value. This is because the metric system is a decimal-based system, which means it uses powers of 10.

To explain this concept, let's take an example. Suppose we have a value of 10 and we want to decrease it. If we move the decimal one place to the right, we get 1, which is 10 times smaller than the original value. This is because each time we move the decimal to the right, we divide the number by 10. So, moving the decimal to the right decreases the value.

On the other hand, if we want to increase the value, we need to move the decimal to the left. When we move the decimal one place to the left, we get 100, which is 10 times larger than the original value. Each time we move the decimal to the left, we multiply the number by 10. So, moving the decimal to the left increases the value.

It's important to remember that in the metric system, the prefix or symbol attached to the unit determines the specific change in value. Each prefix represents a power of 10. For example, kilo (k) represents 10^3, centi (c) represents 10^-2, and so on. By using these prefixes and moving the decimal point accordingly, we can easily convert between different units in the metric system.