what is kilometers versus meters? how long or wide is it?

Question

i have this wksht. for earth science (im a freshman) and i have to match the measurements with the items, or places. measurements are: 1 cm, 10 cm, 1 m, 10m, 100m, 1 km, 10 km, 100km, 1000 km, 10,000km, 100,000km, 1 million km, 10 million km, 100 million km, & 1 billion km. the objects place things are: basketball, classroom, deepest depth or pacific ocean, denver to kansas city, depth of grand canyon, distance of sun from earth, earth to moon, earths diameter, height of a doorway, height of mt. everest, jupiters diameter, length of california, milky way galaxy, moons diameter, nashville to nyc, nearest star(other than sun), ping pong ball, san fransisco to new york, softball, sun to saturn, suns diameter, the high school, width of a door, and width of a light switch lever
so i have to match the places/objects with the measurements
thanks!

Answer 1

In the SI (Système International) the fundamental unit of length is the meter. (1 meter is approximately 1 yard long or 3 feet)

Depending on your scale you simply attach the proper prefix to the meter.

milli = 1/1000 (so a millimeter is taking 1 meter and cutting it into 1000 parts, the length of "one" of those part is a millimeter or 0.001 meter, You would use a millimeter to measure the thickness of paper, its really thin!)

centi = 1/100 (a centimeter is taking a 1 meter and cutting it into 100 parts, the length of "one" of those part is a centimeter, a centimeter can be used to measure a the length of a pencil)

deci = 1/10 (a decimeter is taking a 1 meter and cutting it into 10 parts, the length of "one" of those part is a decimeter, a decimeter is not really used in everyday life)

kilo = 1000 (a kilometer is 1 meter multiplied by 1000, if you want to measure the distance to the moon, you'd use kilometers!) The distance to the moon is about 380,000 km or 380,000,000 meters

and so on... Do some research on the metric prefixes.

Answer 2

Get a ruler, and you will see how long 1 cm or 10 cm or 1 m is. For example, the width of a light switch is about 10 cm.

So the easiest way to do this is for the items that you can picture or actually see, looking at a ruler and the object you can match which one is which.

For the bigger items (Mt. Everest, the sun, etc.) you can use wikipedia to help you.
You may find that you need to get the measurements in feet, yards, miles or whatever and then convert them to the metric system (there are all kinds of online converters available, I like http://www.sciencemadesimple.net/conversions.html)

Answer 3

To start off, the metric system is the easiest measuring system there is.
NO weird fractions. Like where did 5280 feet in a mole come from anyway?
Easy rule:
milli = 1/1000 1 millimeter = 1/1000 of a meter
centi = 1/100
deci = 1/10
Kilo = 1000 so 1 kilometer = 1000 meters.
1 millimeter = 1 inch/25.4 or 0.03937 inches.
1 meter therefore = 39.37 inches.
Conversely, 1 millimeter x 25.4 = 1 inch
25.4 x 36 = 914.4 mm or .9144 meters which also equals one yard.
1 mile/3 feet = 1760 yards x .9144 = 1609.344 meters, or 1.609344 kilometers.
1 kilometer = 0.6213711 miles.
See, the calculations are easy to do.
Just sit down and do the arithmetic.