Video Transcript
Timothy and Steve are calculating how many kilograms there are in sixty thousand grams. Timothy thinks the result is sixty kilograms and Steve thinks it’s six hundred kilograms. Who is correct?
Well grams and kilograms are units from the metric measuring system. And both of these words contain the word gram. Now kilo is a prefix, which means a thousand. So a kilogram is a thousand grams. Likewise, a kilometre is a thousand meters. A kilowatt is a thousand watts. But a “kilowhale” isn’t a thousand whales.
So back to the question, sixty thousand grams, that’s sixty lots of a thousand grams and a thousand grams is a kilogram so that’s sixty kilograms. And in the question it said that Timothy thought the result was sixty kilograms, so that means that Timothy is correct. And in this sort of question it’s always very tempting just to do the maths calculation, but the question actually asked for who is correct. So to get your full marks, you do need to state that Timothy is correct.
