Dimensional Analysis

[Caroline 2A]

hi!

In high school, I learned a very specific way to do dimensional analysis but I did not bring my notes with me and I am not doing it right.

Could y'all share your tips on how you remember the steps to dimensional analysis/ other helpful things?

Thanks!

[Alaura Dis 1H]

Hi,
One thing I try to keep in mind for dimensional analysis is that the units must always cancel out until you get the units you're looking for. I do this by setting up ratios. For example, if you had 10 meters/second and were looking to get that into kilometers/minute, I would take (10m/1s) x (60s/1min) x (1km/1000m) to get .6 km/min
Mainly, I just try and focus on converting the units by canceling them out. I hope this helps

[Briana Chavez 3F]

Hi! Ideally, you should be able to set up the calculation so that you can easily see where the units cancel out! Start out with the given information and then end with the desired units. For example. if you were converting from 88 feet per second to miles per hour, it would be: (88ft/1s) x (1mi/5280ft) x (60s/1min) x (60min/1hr) = 60 mi/hr

[Sofi Ghasemzadeh 2G]

In order to correctly do dimensional analysis, you must ensure that the units cancel out in the end and provide an answer with the units the question is asking for. Basically just make sure the same units are diagonal from each other so they cancel each other out, and set up ratios based on how the units relate to each other to get the correct answer. Hope this helps.

[tristenleem3B]

Hi, to do any dimensional analysis problems the main thing is making sure all of the units not in the answer are cancelled out. Converting from feet to centimeters, for example, the final answer should have conversions that cancel out feet and inches.