I know that for 1M is 1000mM and 1mM is 1000 micoM. But I can’t seem to comprehend it. Is 1M greater than mM? Is is it the other way around.
In: 1
1 M is a larger concentration than 1 mM. As I M = 10^3 mM.
Similar to how 1 meter is greater than 1 millimeter, as a meter is 1000 millimeters. Anytime you write something as 1 unit = 10^(positive integer) (more specifically some number greater than 1) units. The unit on the left hand side is greater, when looking at a 1 to 1 comparison.
Yes, 1 M is greater than 1 mM.
Because 1 M is greater than 0.001 M.
“Milli-” means “multiply by 0.001”. So 1 M = 1000 mM = 1000 * 0.001 M = 1 M.
Micro means multiply by 0.000001.
In the metric system, a 10th of a unit has its own name. One meter, for example, is equal to 10 decimeter (dm). Meanwhile, 1 decimeter is equal to 10 centimeter (cm), and 1 centimeter is equal to 10 millimeter (mm). Naturally, this means that one meter is also equal to (10x10x10) 1000 millimeter.
For some units, we don’t often use steps of 10, but rather use steps of 1000. For length, commonly we use a term for 1000 meters: **Kilo**meter. (Kilo is derived from the greek ‘chilioi’, meaning “thousand”). In the other direction, as mentioned, the **milli**meter: one-thousandth of a meter (from the Latin ‘mille’, meaning one thousand). Similarly, one-thousanth of a millimeter is a **micro**meter. (From the Greek μικρός ‘mikrós’, meaning “small”.)
Mole works similar: One-thousandth of a mole is one **milli**mole, while one-thousandth of a millimole is one **micro**mole.
In the IS system of dimensions, you always have a base unit and then 1000-fold steps down and up. The first 4 upwards are kilo, mega giga and tera, that are probably familiar to you from memory units (byte, kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte and terabyte). Their prefixes are k, M, G, T. The change is always a 1000x multiplication. Some units have historical names, like a million grams is a metric ton, nobody uses megagram. A megaton would be a teragram.
The first 4 downward are milli (m), micro (μ, but people often unofficially use letter u instead out of laziness), nano (n) and pico (p). The change is always a division by 1000, so a pM is a mole divided by 1000 to get m, divided by 1000 again to get μ, again for n, and again for p. There are special ones here too, an Angstrom is for example 100 pm (picometer).
On top of these, when close to the base units, there are some special ones that are not often in use, and are very rare if at all in scientific context. A 10x is deka (dk), in Europe people use dkg (dekagramm) in grocery shops, but I never heard other deka. A 1:10 is deci (d) decimeters (dm) and deciliters (dl) are very much used. A 100x is hekto (h), hektoliter is kind of a useful thing. A 1:100 is a centi (c) centimeters and centiliters are in practical use.
If you want to learn science, it’s probably useful for you to memorize the order of the first few prefixes in both ways, because it’s kind of important to know what is mM or nM. You perhaps can make up some mnemonic or whatever that helps. 🙂
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