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Kilometers to centimeters? Gallons to tablespoons? Feet-per-second squared to miles-per-hour squared?  Unit conversion is a pre-algebra topic that stops many students in their tracks. Questions about converting units pop up routinely on the SAT/ACT. Basic conversions are easy to calculate by simple multiplication or division. More difficult problems require “Dimensional Analysis,” an easy and reliable way to perform conversion calculations. The method is based on the following facts: 1. Equations relating units enable the creation of two fractions whose values are 1; 2. Multiplication by 1 never changes values and is therefore always allowed;  3. "Per" implies division.   To see how they enable the conversion of units using Dimensional Analysis, let's look at two questions. - Simple example 1 mile = 5280 feet. Therefore, 1 mi / 5280 ft and 5280 ft / 1 mi are two fractions with values = 1. Let's convert 45 miles into feet. First write, as a fraction, the quantity to b...

Kilometers to centimeters? Gallons to tablespoons? Feet-per-second squared to miles-per-hour squared?  Unit conversion is a pre-algebra topic that stops many students in their tracks. Questions about converting units pop up routinely on the SAT/ACT. Basic conversions are easy to calculate by simple multiplication or division. More difficult problems require “Dimensional Analysis,” an easy and reliable way to perform conversion calculations. The method is based on the following facts: 1. Equations relating units enable the creation of two fractions whose values are 1; 2. Multiplication by 1 never changes values and is therefore always allowed;  3. "Per" implies division.   To see how they enable the conversion of units using Dimensional Analysis, let's look at two questions. - Simple example 1 mile = 5280 feet. Therefore, 1 mi / 5280 ft and 5280 ft / 1 mi are two fractions with values = 1. Let's convert 45 miles into feet. First write, as a fraction, the quantity to b...

Kilometers to centimeters? Gallons to tablespoons? Feet-per-second squared to miles-per-hour squared?  Unit conversion is a pre-algebra topic that stops many students in their tracks. Questions about converting units pop up routinely on the SAT/ACT. Basic conversions are easy to calculate by simple multiplication or division. More difficult problems require “Dimensional Analysis,” an easy and reliable way to perform conversion calculations. The method is based on the following facts: 1. Equations relating units enable the creation of two fractions whose values are 1; 2. Multiplication by 1 never changes values and is therefore always allowed;  3. "Per" implies division.   To see how they enable the conversion of units using Dimensional Analysis, let's look at two questions. - Simple example 1 mile = 5280 feet. Therefore, 1 mi / 5280 ft and 5280 ft / 1 mi are two fractions with values = 1. Let's convert 45 miles into feet. First write, as a fraction, the quantity to b...

On the SAT/ACT, test takers are warned figures aren’t necessarily drawn to scale. In recent years, however, questions with misshapen diagrams have become vanishingly rare. Nowadays, unless a drawing is clearly distorted, students can assume all figures to be scale drawings. And from this can be inferred a tremendously helpful geometry strategy. Based on the realism of figures drawn to scale, the notion that “seeing is believing” can be used to make good estimates helpful in answering even the most irksome questions. For example: Angles that seem equal probably are equal. Lines look parallel? Call it true. If one segment appears to be slightly less than half the length of another, that can be assumed. Known information in geometric figures can thus be used to “ball park” reasonable guesses about unknown information in the same figure, and this is often all it takes to find the correct answer or at least eliminate wildly incorrect ones. ----- Contact Chris borlandeducational.com Copyrig...

On the SAT/ACT, test takers are warned figures aren’t necessarily drawn to scale. In recent years, however, questions with misshapen diagrams have become vanishingly rare. Nowadays, unless a drawing is clearly distorted, students can assume all figures to be scale drawings. And from this can be inferred a tremendously helpful geometry strategy. Based on the realism of figures drawn to scale, the notion that “seeing is believing” can be used to make good estimates helpful in answering even the most irksome questions. For example: Angles that seem equal probably are equal. Lines look parallel? Call it true. If one segment appears to be slightly less than half the length of another, that can be assumed. Known information in geometric figures can thus be used to “ball park” reasonable guesses about unknown information in the same figure, and this is often all it takes to find the correct answer or at least eliminate wildly incorrect ones. ----- Contact Chris borlandeducational.com Copyrig...