Question

Lakshmi is $ 150cm $ tall. What is her height in metres?

Answer 1

Hint: Here this question belongs to the conversion topic, that is we have to convert the unit from one form to another. Here we have to convert the unit centimetres to the unit metres. In the question, we have to find the height of Lakshmi in metres. So, we have to figure out what number of metres corresponds to $ 150 $ centimetres.

Complete step-by-step answer:
The metres and centimetres are the units to measure the length of physical commodities or items. A metre is abbreviated as m and centimetre is abbreviated as cm. A centimetre is a metric unit of length and it is used for measuring small lengths whereas metre is the SI unit for measuring length and is generally used to measure longer lengths.
So, we have to find Lakshmi’s height in metres when we are provided the same in the centimetres unit.
So, Lakshmi’s height is centimetres is $ 150cm $ .
Now, we have to convert $ 150 $ centimetres into metres.
We know that each metre of length consists of $ 100 $ centimetres. So, $ 1m = 100cm $ .
Let the number of metres that correspond to $ 150 $ centimetres be x.
Then, to convert $ 150 $ centimetres into metres, we follow unitary method where we first find that how many units of metres correspond to a single unit of centimetre and then multiply both sides of the equation by a suitable number so as to get the desired conversion of $ 150 $ centimetres.
So, $ 1 $ metre $ = $ $ 100 $ centimetres
Dividing both sides of the above equation by $ 100 $ , we get,
 $ \Rightarrow 1cm = \dfrac{1}{{100}}m $
Now, we can multiply both sides of the equation by $ 150 $ to get the required conversion. So, we get,
 $ \Rightarrow 150\,cm = \dfrac{1}{{100}}m \times 150 $
Now, we know that division by powers of ten is an easy task. We just have to place a decimal point to the left of the same number of digits as the number of zeroes in the power of ten. Since there are two zeros in $ 100 $ , we place a decimal point to the left of two digits. So, we get,
 $ \Rightarrow 150\,cm = 1.50m $
Hence, $ 150cm $ is the same as $ 1.50m $ .
So, Lakshmi’s height in metres is $ 1.50m $ .

Note: We have different units for solid quantity, liquid quantity and gaseous quantity. Every quantity has a measurement unit from the low quantity to the high quantity. While converting the unit of a quantity from one form to another form we have a standard value. By multiplying or dividing we can convert the unit of the quantity. We have a different system of measurement of a quantity.