Lecture 1 introduced us to the various units that we’ll be using in this course. For example, we have seen that we can express the fundamental quantity distance in terms of feet, meters, centimeters, kilometers,  etc. In addition, we also of course have units that we didn’t discuss, such as miles, yards, inches, and Angstroms (tenths of nanometers; used for wavelengths of light). 

What if we have a distance expressed in terms of one unit, but we really want it expressed in terms of another unit.  For example, perhaps you asked a friend for the distance from Nashville to New York. Your friend, being the smart-ass that he is, gave you that distance in inches.  You know very well that a much nicer unit would be miles or kilometers (a much more appropriate unit for such distances), so you are left with the problem of converting the given distance in inches to the desired distance in miles (or kilometers). How do we accomplish this? The desired unit conversion is the topic of this lecture, by the end of which this conversion should seem very straightforward (if it doesn’t already).

Warning: You may already know how to do such a conversion.  As you were warned in L1, however, make sure that you can not only obtain the correct answer, but that you can also show your reasoning (that is, show the steps!) in how to obtain the desired answer.  Your exams will be graded on the reasoning shown as well as on the answer!

Click on Times 1 at the upper left when you are ready to proceed with this lecture.