Introduction

Unit conversion is one of the most fundamental skills within a physics classroom. Often times we will be given problems that use one form in their presentation while the equations we use require a different unit of measurement to calculate.

Starter Conversions

A simple example is a conversion from inches to feet. First we make note that the unit of inches is smaller then feet. Next we need to know how many inches are in a foot. In this case, 12 inches is equivalent to 1 foot. Given a problem...

How many feet is 36 inches?

We look to see how many sets of 12 inches are within the 36 inches that are given in the problem. In practice this means that we divide 36 by 12. giving us an answer of...

36 inches is equivalent to 3 feet.

One more basic example would be to work in reverse. Instead of going from inches to feet we can do the opposite when it is feet to inches. First we note that feet are bigger then inches. We also still keep in mind that 12 inches is equivalent to 1 foot. Our problem...

How many inches is 13 feet?

This problem tells us that there are 13 sets of the 12 inches. We multiply 13 by 12 to give us...

13 feet is equivalent to 156 inches.

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