Standards and Units
Measurements were usually created to compare to some reference object or other agreed-upon standard. For instance, if trading sea shells, the standard would be… a seashell. One sea shell equaled one seashell.Okay… hang in there… keep going…
So, along the way, magic occurred (not really) and people began to equate the word "one" with "unit." So, if you said, "Give me eight units of seashells," since seashells were measured in… themselves… you would get eight seashells.
But suppose a guy sold sand. Selling grains of sand would be… dumb. Suppose (sticking to the beach motif) he had a coconut hollowed out. His thing was, one scoop of sand for one seashell…
So for sand, the unit would be scoops.
A buyer would say, "Give me eight scoops of sand," and would pay eight seashells for it.
It must be time for a definition!
Unit: a quantity chosen as a standard in terms of which other quantities may be expressed. (Oxford dictionary.
Not very helpful, but in the right direction!
Anne Marie Helmenstine, Ph.D. (https://www.thoughtco.com/definition-of-unit-in-chemistry-605934) defines it this way:
UNIT DEFINITION
A unit is any standard used for comparison in measurements.
Going back to strictly intuition, most people already know what units are. "Comparison" is a good word to hang onto, so do that.
Now think about things you already know. Gallons of gasoline. Pounds of lunch meat. Miles to the next town.
Using a standard unit like miles allows us to make reasonable comparisons. A mile is a mile is a mile. So if it is 200 miles to Townville and 400 miles to Villaton, since a mile is a mile is a mile, it must be twice as far to Villaton.
If I have 4 gallons of paint and you have 2, I have twice as much paint, since a gallon is a gallon is a gallon.
So, think about things around you. What are the standard units for them.
Distances between towns?
Shampoo?
Foundation?
Firewood?
Soda (pop)?
Chances are, for at least one of those, you thought of different standards. For example, you might find 20 oz bottles of soda as well as 2 liter bottles!
There are times when converting from one standard unit to the other is desirable.
Conversion and Equivalency
The process of converting from one standard unit to another boils down to finding how many of one thing is equal to one thing of the other.Good news, #1: The math on this is easy.
Good news, #2: You can usually look it up on Google.
Bad news, #1: An explanation follows anyway.
To start with a definition of conversion…
Conversion: The process of finding out how many units from one standard are equal to how many units from another standard.
Suppose you discover that, in a fantasy novel, the people in one town sell milk by the Nallog and in another by the Ecnuo. Some guy has a barrel on which are etched lines for both Nallogs and Ecnuos, and another dude sees that the milk comes to the 2 Nallog mark and also the 256 Ecnou mark.
In the (silly) example, you can see that 2 Nallogs = 256 Ecnous. That is, the two quantities are equivalent.
Finding out how many Ecnous are in a Nallog is easy! Divide the bigger number by the smaller. Bam!
256 ÷ 2 = 128
So 1 Nallog (the bigger unit) is equivalent to 128 Ecnou (the smaller unit).
In the (silly) example above, the conversion factor is 2.
Conversion factor: A number that, when multiplied will convert one unit to another.
Oxford Dictionary says it like this: an arithmetical multiplier for converting a quantity expressed in one set of units into an equivalent expressed in another.
To find (or derive) a conversion factor for anything, all that is needed is to know how much of something is present in the two different units. Then, to find the conversion factor, divide the larger by the smaller of the quantities. The quotient (number after you push the equal button) will be how many of the smaller thing (the bigger number) are in the bigger thing (smaller number).
No, that's not confusing, is it?
EXAMPLE
A container has 591.5 milliliters of shampoo in it. The label also says it has 10 clarkens (which are cleverly abbreviated as "Clar"). Find the conversion factor for milliliters and clarkens.
591.5 ml
_______ = 59.15 ml/Clar
10 Clar
Thus, 1 Clar is equal to 59.15 ml.
BAM! Easy math!
Conclusion
It is always best to just measure things in the units you need. But sometimes, that's impossible. Sometimes your most accurate measuring device provides units that you have to convert.A solid understanding of equivalency and conversion prepares students to face the demands of science and engineering.
About that math…
Use the following link to see an example of how to do the math for unit conversions…
