welcome to math with mr. J in this video we're going to be converting metric units of mass and specifically milligrams grams and kilograms and our base unit of mass for the metric system is going to be a gram so everything's going to be based around that gram and the other units of mass are going to have prefixes attached to gram and that's going to tell us what those units of mass mean so for example milligram the prefix milli means one one thousandth so a milligram is one one thousandth of a gram therefore a thousand milligrams equals one gram and for a point of reference a milligram is a unit of mass that is about a grain of salt or sand next we talked about our base unit gram and for point of reference a gram is about a paperclip or stick of gum and then kilogram we have the prefix kilo that means 1,000 so it takes 1,000 grams to equal one kilogram and a kilogram is a little over two pounds so about the mass of a textbook and then down here we have one last note one kilogram equals a million milligrams so let's jump into some conversions here where we're going to convert between milligrams grams and kilograms so number one three kilograms equals how many grams while one kilogram equals a thousand grams but we have three so a thousand a thousand a thousand so we can do 3 times 1000 to give us how many grams that would equal and that going to give us three thousand grams next we have eight kilograms equals how many grams so eight groups of a thousand a thousand a thousand a thousand eight times so when we're going from kilograms to grams we multiply by a thousand just like number one except we have eight kilograms here so we're going to end up with eight thousand grams eight kilograms equals eight thousand grams for number three we're going to go the opposite way we're going to go from grams to kilograms so we start with 5,000 grams and we need to split that 5000 into groups of a thousand each one of those groups of a thousand equals one kilogram so when we're going from grams to kilograms we need to divide by 1000 5000 divided by a thousand equals five number four were going from kilograms to milligrams so three kilograms each one of those kilograms is a million milligrams so a million a million a million so we do three times a million and that's going to give us an answer of three million milligrams number five we're going the opposite way so we're going from milligrams to kilograms so we need to split into groups of a million each one of those millions is a kilogram so we need to do four million divided by a million and we end up with four kilograms so four million milligrams equals four kilograms and lastly number six eight thousand milligrams equals how many grams while we need to split into groups of a thousand each one of those a thousand is a one gram so milligrams grams divided by a thousand and we end up with eight grams so there you have it there's converting metric units of mass with milligrams grams and kilograms hopefully that helped thanks so much for watching until next time peace