Video Transcript
Use less than, equals, or greater
than to fill in the blank. 0.2 kilograms what 276 grams.
In this question, instead of simply
comparing the values, there’s the added complexity that the units given are
different. We have kilograms and grams. In order to compare these two
values, we need to make sure that they’re in the same units. We can use the conversion that one
kilogram is equal to 1000 grams. So if we have a unit in kilograms
that we want to change into a unit in grams, we would multiply by 1000. If we want to go in the reverse
direction with a unit in grams and convert it into a unit in kilograms, then we’d
divide by 1000.
So if we look at our two values, we
can either change our units in kilograms into grams or change our unit in grams into
kilograms, but we don’t need to change them both. In this case, we could look at
changing 0.2 kilograms into unit in grams. So we take the 0.2 and multiply by
1000. If we consider 0.2 written in a
grid like this with our two in the tenths column, when we multiply by 1000, what we
need to do is move this two three places to the left. So now the two is in the hundreds
column. But we can’t leave it there on its
own without some placeholders because that two represents two hundreds. So now we know that 0.2 kilograms
is the same as 200 grams.
We can then easily compare 0.2
kilograms, or 200 grams, with 276 grams. Which one is bigger? Well, it’s the 276 grams. So we’re going to use the less than
symbol because 0.2 kilograms is less than 276 grams. And that would be our answer, the
less than symbol. So what would have happened if we
changed 276 grams into kilograms instead? In this case, we would have been
dividing by 1000 to give us 0.276 kilograms. We can still see that 0.2 kilograms
is less than 0.276 kilograms, confirming our answer of less than.
