We introduced the Covid slide in our last post, Covid Slide. Summer is here and while we don’t want to think about school in September, we can think about doing some activities to help prevent or at least minimize any loss in what we learned this past year. In this post we’re going to look at the conversion of units between metric and imperial. For example, between cups, tablespoons and millilitres and litres. We’ll also look at temperature units, Fahrenheit and Celsius. A nice way to do this is through a recipe. This is a chocolate chip cookie recipe that I really like and use all the time when I want to have cookies.
While there are formulas to convert between units a calculator specifically to convert between the units can be used. Below are a few unit conversion calculators.
Calculuators used in the conversion of units
Fahrenheit / Celsius calculator
The formulas for converting between Fahrenheit and Celsius are pretty simple and are given below.
T_{F^\circ} = \frac{9}{5} \times T_{C^\circ} + 32 In this first equation, if you are given the temperature in Celsius you can plug it into the equation as T_{C^\circ} and then solve for the Farenheit value, T_{F^\circ}
T_{C^\circ} = \frac{5}{9} \times ( T_{F^\circ} – 32) This second equation does the opposite, Farenheight to Celsius.
Now for the recipe. This recipe is from a book full of chocolate chip cookie recipes. Each recipe was an entry to a chocolate chip cookie contest. And this recipe below is the winner. After the recipe there are some questions that involve conversions
CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE RECIPE
Ingredients
- 1 3/4 c flour
- ¼ tsp baking soda
- 1 c butter or margarine, softened
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 c granulated sugar
- ½ c dark brown sugar, firmly packed
- 1 egg
- 1/3 c unsweetened cocoa
- 2 tbsp milk
- 1 c chopped pecans or walnuts
- 6 ounces semisweet chocolate chips
Directions
- Preheat oven to 350F.
- Combine flour and baking soda and set aside.
- In a separate bowl, cream butter. Then add in vanilla and sugars and mix until fluffy.
- Beat in egg.
- Mix in cocoa powder, then milk.
- Mix in dry ingredients until blended.
- Stir in nuts and chocolate chips.
- Line a baking pan with aluminum foil.
- Drop heaping teaspoons of cookie dough onto lined baking sheet.
- Bake at 350F for 12-13 minutes or until slightly browned around edges.
- Remove from oven. Let cool a bit before removing from pan. The cookies will harden up a bit as it cools.
Note: Makes about 3 dozen.
QUESTIONS
- What does tbsp mean?
- What does 1 c mean
- What does tsp mean?
- How many tbsp are in 1 c?
- How many ounces are in a 1c?
- 6 ounces is how many cups?
- How many mL in 1 c?
- How many ml in 1 tsp?
- What temperature do the cookies have to be baked at?
- Convert the temperature in #9 to a temperature in Celsius?
- How many cookies did you make?
- If you wanted to make 9 dozen cookies, how many cups of flour would you need?
- If you wanted to make 2 dozen cookies, how many cups of flour would you need?
Recipes are a great example of when the conversion of units comes in handy. But where else can the conversion of units be used? Measures of distance – miles vs kilometres; time – seconds vs hours, days, weeks, years; weight – pounds vs kilograms; volume – ounces vs mililitres. Different parts of the world using different units to measure particular quantities e.g. Imperial vs metric.
