this is Sarah with register nurse orn.com and I'm going to talk to you about dimensional analysis di dimensional analysis is used to solve drug Osage calculation problems that you may encounter in nursing school before you start working dimensional analysis problems you must first learn the metric table in my previous video I talked about the metric table and went over it with you if you need a copy of the metric table you can go to our website register nurse rn.com metric table and you can print it out um it's in Microsoft dox format and you can have that as a reference and behind me is um a metric table and I'm going to show you how to use the metric table and to solve conversion problems but first let me talk about dimensional analysis dimensional analysis is a pro problem solving technique where you can solve for any numbers or values and multiply them by one and not change the value so um I'm going to show you just using a basic problem how you would set one up and how it works once you get the hang of it solving drug and dosage calculations is really easy also um we are doing a video series of how to solve different types of drug and dosage calculations problems that you may encounter in nursing school so be sure to check those out and we'll have them listed on our website and on this YouTube channel so let's start working some problems the first problem I have is 8 g equals how many mill M this is just a basic conversion problem that you may be asked to solve above here we have the metric table it's a very good idea you memorize this metric table before you start working the problems that way you can just work the problem and not have to go back and look at the table but since we're beginning we're going to go we need the table in front of us and so we're going to learn how to do it by looking at the table I've already worked the problem out here because I felt like having it worked out you could see what I was talking about and then I'll go back and work another problem by hand okay how I like to set my problems up is I like to first set the problem up you have the top and the bottom these are not fractions a lot of people think that these are fractions it's not fractions so get out of the mindset of thinking it's a fraction I put 8 g equals how many milligrams some people like to put one but I like to put how many milligrams the key is you are trying to get from grams to milligrams cuz the problem is asking for milligrams so what we're going to do is in dimensional analysis you work the problems diagonally like this and you want to cancel out whatever is going here here is grams so we wanted to cancel that out so we put 8 gam equals how many milligrams so we're going to write grams and if we look at our metric table we will see that 1 g equals 1,000 th000 mg so we're going to put 1 G equal 1,000 mg and the problem was asking us for milligrams so we're done all we have to do now is multiply and divide we're going to multiply 8 * 1,000 which equals 8,000 multiply everything on the bottom the only thing on the bottom is one so you'll put 8,000 / 1 which equals 8,000 mg there's 8,000 milligram and 8 G so that was a basic problem now let's take it a little step further okay let's see 8 g equals how many micrograms before we were doing milligrams but let's do micrograms again I'm going to set up the problem like this 8 g equals how many micrograms so we're going to move grams over here because remember you work dimensional analysis diagonally so we're going to move our grams and we're going to go up to our metric table and we're going to see how many grams are in a microgram so as you look at your metric table you don't really see that 1 g equals so many microgram so we're going to go to Mig you see according to the table 1 g equals 1,000 millgram so we'll do that our goal is to get to micrograms these dimensional analysis problems can be several steps so 1 g equals 1,000 mg okay we have canceled out our grams so we're going to Mark our grams out now write milligrams over here because again we work diagonally and we're going to go up to our table and we're trying to get to microgram so let's see if we can find on the table if something will equal to micrograms we do we see 1 millgram equals 1,000 microgr so we're going to write 1 and it equals 1,000 micrograms and write a th000 micrograms and we're going to cancel out our milligrams okay and what was the problem asking us for it was asking us for micrograms so we are done we can multiply and divide now so you're going to take 8 * 1,000 * 1,000 which equals 8 million and you're going to multiply on the bottom 1 * 1 = 1 and then you're going to divide 8 million / 1 equals 8 million so there are 8 million micrograms in 8 grams okay let's do one more problem just to make sure you get the hang of [Music] it this this problem is 100 milliliters equals how many ounces again we're going to set up our problem with what it's asking for 100 millit equals how many ounces with dimensional analysis again we work diagonally so we're going to move milliliters over here and we're going to go and refer to our metric table how can we get from milliliters to ounces so we see up here there's really not one milliliter equals so many ounces so we're going to this is probably going to be a multiple step problem so it says that 15 milliliters equals 1 tablespoon and then what two tablespoons equals 1 o so what we'll do is we'll start out with milliliters so we'll write 15 m equals 1 tablespoon milliliters cancels out and now we're going to move tablespoons down here at the bottom and we're going to refer to our table and our key is to get to ounces so we see that two tablespoon equals 1 oz so we're going to put 2 tablespoons equal 1 oz and tablespoons cancels out now we're done because we've got to ounces is what we were supposed to solve for so we are going to multiply everything at the top and bottom and then divide 100 * 1 * 1 is 100 and 15 * 2 is 30 100 / 30 is 3 so your answer is there are 3 oz and 100 milliliters so that is the basic conversions on how to use dimensional analysis I hope that helped explain it I remember whenever I was in nursing school um whenever I actually figured out how to use dimensional analysis I thought it was the best thing ever um please go to our website register nurse rn.com we have a lot of practice quizzes that you can work and um see how well you did on the quiz for free it's register nurse rn.com and we have a slider on the page just click quizzes and it'll take you there um be sure to also check out our video tutorials because we're going to be solving um more complex conversion problems that you'll see in nursing school like IV boluses um dosage and calculations based on a patient weight and it gets a little bit more indepth so I hope this helped clarify some things and thank you so much for watching and be sure to check out our website register nurse rn.com