PA_M7_S3_T1_Metric
Units of Mass Transcript
Metric units of mass start with a base unit called a gram, and use the
same convention for powers of 10 designated by a prefix to expand to
things like kilograms, hectograms, dekagrams, milligrams or centigrams.
There are more than these that you see listed. An important thing to
understand about mass is that mass is a unit of measure of the amount of
something that exists, not how much that thing weighs. Mass is the
ability of some material to resist being put into motion, while weight is
the response of the same amount of that material under the effect of
gravity. Mass on the Moon will be exactly the same as the mass on earth.
Weight on the moon will be much less than weight on earth.
Mass is a more fundamental property than weight because it does not
depend on where I measure it. A gram is the base unit; dekagram is 10
times that base unit, or 10 grams; hectogram is 100 times the base unit,
or 100 grams; kilogram is 1000 times the base unit or 1000 grams. A
decigram, on the other hand, is a gram divided by 10 or 1/10 th of a gram.
A centigram is a gram divided by 100 and a milligram is a gram divided by
1000.
These are examples of the basic units of mass in the metric system.