Question

Converting compound units

You would like to know whether silicon will float in mercury and you know that can determine this based on their densities. Unfortunately, you have the density of mercury in units of kilogram/meter3 and the density of silicon in other units: 2.33 gram/centimeter3. You decide to convert the density of silicon into units of kilogram/meter3 to perform the comparison. By which combination of conversion factors will you multiply 2.33 gram/centimeter3 to perform the unit conversion?

Answer 1

Dividing the silicon density by 1000 and then multiply it by 1000000.

Step-by-step explanation:

A kilogram equals 1000 grams and a cubic meter equals 1000000 cubic centimeters. Hence, we must divide the silicon density by 1000 and then multiply itby 1000000 to convert the value into kilograms per cubic centimeter. That is:

`x = 2.33\,(g)/(cm^(3))* (1\,kg)/(1000\,g)* (1000000\,cm^(3))/(1\,m^(3))`

`x = 2330\,(kg)/(m^(3))`

In a nutshell, we must multiply the density of silicon by 1000 to obtains its value in kilograms per cubic meter.