These are the two most common measurements:
A milliliter (that is "milli" and "liter" put together) is a very small amount of liquid.
Here is a milliliter of milk in a teaspoon.
It doesn't even fill the teaspoon!
|If you collect about 20 drops of water, you will have 1 milliliter:|
|20 drops of water makes about 1 milliliter|
|And a teaspoon can hold about five milliliters:|
|1 teaspoon of liquid is about 5 milliliters|
Milliliters are often written as ml (for short), so "100 ml" means "100 milliliters".
Here we have 150 ml of milk in a measuring cup.
It doesn't say "150" ... it says "50" ... but it is half-way between 100 and 200 so you can figure out it is 150 ml.
A liter is just a bunch of milliliters put all together. In fact, 1000 milliliters makes up 1 liter:
1 liter = 1,000 milliliters
This jug has exactly 1 liter of water in it.
Liters are often written as L (for short), so "3 L" means "3 Liters" (some people use lowercase l, but that looks too much like 1).
Milk, soda and other drinks are often sold in liters.
A cube that is 0.1 meters (10 cm or 100 mm)
and a square meter that is 1 millimeter thick also contains 1 liter.
The next time you are at the store take a minute and look on the labels to see how many liters (or milliliters) are in each container!
Other Volume Measurements
You may come across these other volume measurements:
Cubic Meter (m3)
Volume is length by length by length, so the basic unit of volume is a cube that is 1 meter on each side.
The Unit is written m3 (cubic meters).
So, a cube that is 1 meter on each side is a cubic meter (m3) ...
... and that is also equal to 1,000 liters.
1 m3 = 1,000 Liters
A Megaliter is a million liters (1,000,000 L). Useful for measuring large quantities of water, such as in lakes and dams.
Cubic Centimeter (cc)
A Cubic Centimeter (abbreviated cc or cm3) is a cube that is 1 centimeter on each side.
It equals 1 mL (one-thousandth of a liter), and one-millionth of a cubic meter. Or to put it another way:
1 m3 = 1,000 L = 1,000,000 cm3
(one cubic meter = a thousand liters = a million cubic centimeters)
A Cubic Millimeter is a cube that is 1 millimeter on each side.
It is one-millionth of a liter, and one-billionth of a cubic meter.
It is very small, and we need 1,000 Cubic Millimeters to make just one milliliter.
A liter (L) is:
- a bit more than a quart (US measure)
- about the quantity in a sports drink bottle
- close to the volume of a kilogram of water
A cubic centimeter is about:
- the size of a grape
A cube that is 1mm on each side is a cubic millimeter