Is millilitre the same as litre?

Answer 1

The metric system uses units and prefixes to units.

Here, in both cases, the unit is the litre - milli-litre and litre

The milli- prefix means one thousandth (1/1000)

Therefore 1 millilitre is one thousandth of a litre - it is much smaller.

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The reason for the prefixes is so that the numbers stay reasonable.

For example, some buses weighs about 17,000,000 grams when empty, or 23,000,000 grams when fully laden. With these large numbers it can be hard to appreciate what they mean. However, the metric system uses a system of prefixes.

As kilo- means 1000, 1 kg = 1000g, so the empty and laden weights of the bus can be re-written as 17,000,000 g = 17,000 kg, and 23,000,000 g = 23,000 kg - which are much easier to appreciate as a bag of sugar weights 1 kg and the bus can now be thought of in terms of thousands of bags of sugar.

The metric system goes further in that mega- is the prefix for a million, so the bus can be considered as 17 Mg and 23 Mg respectively - but 1 megagram (Mg) is called 1 tonne, so the bus weighs 17 tonnes unladen and 23 tonnes laden. (The name Tonne (pronounced 'ton') is used as 1 Tonne = 1000 kg is quite close to 1 [long] ton = 2240 lbs.)

The prefixes apply to all units, so 1 km = 1000 m , 1 Mm = 1000000 m, 1 mm (1 millimetre) = 1/1000 m, etc.