## How do you go from meter to nanometer? [ENDORSED]

Leslie Romo 1C
Posts: 21
Joined: Fri Sep 25, 2015 3:00 am

### How do you go from meter to nanometer?

For a problem my answer was 3.4x10^-7m but in the solutions manual the answer turns out to be 340 nm. How do you go from 3.4x10^-7m to 340 nm?

604599327
Posts: 20
Joined: Fri Sep 25, 2015 3:00 am

### Re: How do you go from meter to nanometer?

Because a nanometer is 1.0 x 10^-9 of a meter, 340 nm is equivalent to 3.4 x 10^-7 m. Essentially, it is only a different way to write the same amount.

Matthew Oh 3I
Posts: 20
Joined: Fri Sep 25, 2015 3:00 am

### Re: How do you go from meter to nanometer?

This is just a simple conversion. 1 nanometer is equivalent to 10^-9 meters.
Your conversion equation should be: (3.4 x 10^-7 m) x ((1nm)/(10^-9m))... The meters cancel out and your answer should be 340 nm.

Manuel Gonzalez_1L
Posts: 17
Joined: Fri Sep 25, 2015 3:00 am

### Re: How do you go from meter to nanometer?

1X10^-9 meters is the same a 1 nanometer. The conversion is quite simple. Example: 3X10^-9 meters is 3 nanometers or 450nm is 450X10^-9m.

Keirsten Andersen 3L
Posts: 33
Joined: Fri Sep 25, 2015 3:00 am

### Re: How do you go from meter to nanometer?

The back of our text book has a very helpful list of SI prefixes. For example, nano- is 10^-9. Thus, a nanometer is equal to 1 x 10^-9 meter. Knowing this, you can cross multiply the value you found (3.4 x 10^-7 m) with the conversion factor of 1 nm per 1 x 10^-9 m to reach 340 nm.

Dino Renna 1D
Posts: 13
Joined: Fri Sep 25, 2015 3:00 am

### Re: How do you go from meter to nanometer?

There is also an easier way that I use sometimes which is also quicker in the anything to the 10^-7 for example 1.2 x 10^-7 can be rewritten as 120 x 10^-9 because the decimal was moved two units to the right which is 10^-2 and therefore makes it 10^-9 which is known to be nanometers and therefore it would be 120nm. Im not sure if that was helpful or more confusing...

Christopher Lew 1L
Posts: 20
Joined: Fri Sep 25, 2015 3:00 am

### Re: How do you go from meter to nanometer?  [ENDORSED]

As everyone else has stated, 1 nanometer is equal to 1 x 10^-9m. The course reader gives a useful equation for conversions:

Information Required = Information Given x $\frac{Units Required}{Units Given}$

For example 256cm^2 to square meters
Area (M^2) = 256 cm^2 x ($\frac{1m}{100cm}$)^2
= 2.56 x 10^-2 m^2

Jane Sin 3A
Posts: 28
Joined: Wed Sep 21, 2016 2:58 pm

### Re: How do you go from meter to nanometer?

My TA gave us a pretty easy way to memorize all the SI units regarding to meters.
For meters, millimeters, micrometers, nanometers, each one becomes smaller by 10^-3 and it is essentially in alphabetical order.

So millimeters is 10^-3
micrometers is 10^-6
nanometers is 10^-9

(I know millimeters is after micrometers in terms of alphabetical order but if you ignore that this method made it easier for me to memorize the si units.)