Kilometers and Meters | Converting km to m and Converting m to km | Math with Mr. J

[Music] welcome to math with mr j [Music] in this video i'm going to cover how to convert between kilometers and meters so kilometers to meters and then meters to kilometers now one very important thing to keep in mind one kilometer equals one thousand meters let's jump into number one where we have three kilometers equals how many meters well each kilometer is one thousand meters so we have one thousand meters one thousand meters and then one thousand meters in other words three times one thousand that gives us three thousand so three kilometers equals three thousand meters so when we convert from kilometers to meters we multiply by one thousand let's move on to number two where we have 12 and a half or 12.5 kilometers equals how many meters now this number is not as easy to work with as the three kilometers in number one but what we can do here we can move the decimal three times to the right in order to multiply that number by one thousand when we multiply by one thousand we push each digit to the left three places this will increase the value of that number by one thousand or in other words we are multiplying it by one thousand so again what we can do we can move the decimal three times to the right in order to shift all of our digits three places to the left and give us the correct answer so let me rewrite 12 and 5 10 here and let's move the decimal once twice and three times to the right we can fill these gaps with zeros and we have our answer twelve thousand five hundred so twelve point five kilometers equals twelve thousand five hundred meters let's try that same strategy for number one and see if we still get three thousand so i will rewrite three here and the decimal goes after a whole number let's move the decimal three times to the right so once twice and then three times fill these gaps with zeros and we get 3000 that way as well so to recap when we go from kilometers to meters we multiply by 1000 and we can move the decimal three times to the right in order to multiply a number by one thousand let's move on to number three where we have seven thousand meters equals how many kilometers so each group of one thousand meters equals a kilometer so how many thousands are in seven thousand in other words seven thousand divided by one thousand that gives us seven seven thousand meters equals seven kilometers so when we go from meters to kilometers we divide by one thousand move on to number four where we have thirty four thousand five hundred eighty meters equals how many kilometers so meters two kilometers we need to divide by one thousand now this number is not as easy to work with as the seven thousand meters in number three where we used mental math in order to divide by one thousand what we can do here we can move the decimal three times to the left that's going to divide our number by one thousand when we divide by one thousand we push or shift each digit to the right three places this is going to give us 1 1000 of the value of our original number in other words we are dividing by 1000 so let's move that decimal three times to the left in order to divide by one thousand so thirty four thousand five hundred eighty the decimal goes at the end of a whole number and we will move it once twice and three times to the left so the decimal is going to go in between the four and the five and we get 34 and 58 hundredths or 34.58 34 580 meters equals 34.58 kilometers now i did not include this zero in the final answer because zeros to the right of a decimal do not change the value of that decimal so typically we do not include them because again they don't change the value so we leave them off if you were to leave that 0 on it would still be equivalent it would still be correct but again typically we don't include them so there you have it there's how you convert between kilometers and meters if we're going from kilometers to meters we multiply by 1000 and we can do that by moving the decimal three times to the right if we're going from meters to kilometers we divide by 1000 and we can do that by moving the decimal three times to the left i hope that helped thanks so much for watching until next time peace you