Units and Unit Conversion · Sub-skill drill
Metric Prefix Conversions
Metric prefixes scale by powers of ten: kilo is 10^3, centi is 10^−2, milli is 10^−3, mega is 10^6, micro is 10^−6, nano is 10^−9. To convert between metric units, count the steps in the prefix table and multiply or divide by the corresponding power of ten. The SAT rewards students who have memorized the prefixes by name; looking them up costs time, and the wrong-answer choices include the values that would result from off-by-three exponent errors.
How this sub-skill is tested on the SAT
Metric prefixes scale by powers of ten: kilo is 10^3, centi is 10^−2, milli is 10^−3, mega is 10^6, micro is 10^−6, nano is 10^−9. To convert between metric units, count the steps in the prefix table and multiply or divide by the corresponding power of ten. The SAT rewards students who have memorized the prefixes by name; looking them up costs time, and the wrong-answer choices include the values that would result from off-by-three exponent errors.
This sub-skill sits inside the broader Units and Unit Conversion topic, which is part of the College Board's Problem Solving & Data Analysis content domain. Problem Solving and Data Analysis is where the SAT pretends to be the real world. Every question in this domain is wrapped in context: a recipe, a survey, a clinical trial, a lab measurement, a marketing report. The math itself is rarely harder than middle-school arithmetic — ratios, proportions, percentages, unit conversions, means, medians, scatter plots, two-way tables, and basic probability. What trips students up is the reading. The College Board has spent two decades calibrating these prompts to reward students who slow down on the setup and punish students who rush to compute. ScoreRe
Practice questions in this drill set
Below are 6 practice questions targeting this exact sub-skill, ordered from easier to harder. Each question is tagged with its target score band so you can focus on questions that match the band you are working out of. Worked solutions are open by default — read each one even if you got the question right, because the way the solution is structured often reveals a faster path than the one you used.
-
A measurement of 11 kilograms is equivalent to how many grams?
- A 110,000
- B 1,100
- C 1,011
- D 11,000
Worked solution
Answer: D — 11,000
There are 1000 grams in 1 kilograms. Multiply: 11 × 1000 = 11,000 grams.
-
A measurement of 11 hours is equivalent to how many seconds?
- A 3,960
- B 39,600
- C 396,000
- D 3,611
Worked solution
Answer: B — 39,600
There are 3600 seconds in 1 hours. Multiply: 11 × 3600 = 39,600 seconds.
-
A measurement of 23 miles is equivalent to how many feet?
- A 12,144
- B 1,214,400
- C 121,440
- D 5,303
Worked solution
Answer: C — 121,440
There are 5280 feet in 1 miles. Multiply: 23 × 5280 = 121,440 feet.
-
A measurement of 20 kilometers is equivalent to how many meters?
- A 20,000
- B 2,000
- C 1,020
- D 200,000
Worked solution
Answer: A — 20,000
There are 1000 meters in 1 kilometers. Multiply: 20 × 1000 = 20,000 meters.
-
A measurement of 5 liters is equivalent to how many milliliters?
- A 5,000
- B 50,000
- C 1,005
- D 500
Worked solution
Answer: A — 5,000
There are 1000 milliliters in 1 liters. Multiply: 5 × 1000 = 5,000 milliliters.
-
A measurement of 36 kilograms is equivalent to how many grams?
- A 360,000
- B 3,600
- C 36,000
- D 1,036
Worked solution
Answer: C — 36,000
There are 1000 grams in 1 kilograms. Multiply: 36 × 1000 = 36,000 grams.
Why this band assignment matters
Every question in this drill is tagged with a target score band — 400–500, 500–600, 600–700, or 700–800 — based on its difficulty and the patterns the College Board uses for questions at each level. If you are aiming to break out of a 580 plateau, the 600–700 questions in this drill are your highest-leverage practice. If you are chasing 750+, the 700–800 questions here are the ones that separate the top 10% of test takers from everyone else.
Use the band tags to filter your work. If you can confidently solve every 400–500 and 500–600 question without notes, move to the 600–700 set. If those land cleanly, the 700–800 set is your final boss. The worked solutions in this drill are written so that even the hardest questions become learnable patterns once you have seen the structure of the solve a few times.