Common Unit Conversions

Common Unit Conversions

Watch this video lesson, and you will become a pro at converting between inches and feet, between feet and yards, and between quarts and gallons. Learn the special numbers involved in each conversion.

Unit Conversions

Unit conversions are essential in everyday living. They are also essential in math problems. If you are given a problem in feet but your formula requires inches, then you need to be able to quickly convert, or change, your feet into inches.

This is the topic of this video lesson. You will become a pro at three very common unit conversions. We have included inches and feet, feet and yards, and quarts and gallons. These are common conversions. Of course, there are others that you can research later, but for this video lesson, we will focus on just these three.

Inches and Feet

So, the first is inches and feet. Where do you see these types of measurements? You see them whenever you go to the doctor's and he measures your height. You most often will see your height written in both feet and inches. But if you had to use your height in a math problem, you could only use one or the other; you can't use both together. So, you need to convert your inches to feet or your feet to inches depending on the problem. Let's see how we can do this.

To convert feet to inches, we multiply by 12 because there are 12 inches to every foot. Don't ask me why there are 12 inches to a foot. I don't know. There just are. And you will remember it the more often you use it. And if you keep a ruler handy, you will see that there are 12 inches in a foot. So, for example, two feet becomes 2 * 12 = 24 inches.

To convert inches to feet we need to go the other way; instead of multiplying by 12, we now need to divide by 12. So, six inches becomes 6 / 12 = 0.5 feet. Be careful that you don't just add a dot between the feet and the inches. That would give you an incorrect answer. You need to divide your inches by 12 to get the decimal portion of your feet. So, five feet and three inches becomes 5 + (3 / 12) = 5.25 feet.

Feet and Yards

Next, we have feet and yards. You will see these measurements most often when measuring rooms and other largish spaces. If you have a yardstick, you can see that we have three feet in a yard. So, can you guess how we would convert yards into feet? Yes, we multiply our yards by three to get to feet. So, five yards becomes 5 * 3 = 15 feet. What about the other way? What about converting from feet to yards? Yes, you guessed it! We divide by three. So, two feet becomes 2 / 3 = 0.667 yards.

Quarts and Gallons

Last, but not least, we have quarts and gallons. Can you think of a place where you see gallons and quarts? In grocery stores, you see these in the milk aisle. Milk comes in gallons and sometimes quarts. Whipping cream comes in quarts. How do quarts and gallons relate? Every gallon has four quarts in it. This one is easy to remember. Think of quarts. How many quarters are in a dollar? Four! Because there are four quarts in a gallon, to convert from gallons to quarts, we multiply by four. So, four gallons has 4 * 4 quarts. To convert from quarts to gallons, we divide by four. So, three quarts is 3 / 4 = 0.75 gallons.

Lesson Summary

Let's review what we've learned. To convert means to change.

• To convert feet to inches, we multiply the feet by 12. To convert inches to feet, we divide the inches by 12.
• To convert yards to feet, we multiply the yards by three. To convert feet to yards, we divide the feet by three.
• To convert gallons to quarts, we multiply the gallons by four. To convert quarts to gallons, we divide the quarts iby four.