Metric Volume

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.

 

 

Liter

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)  on each side contains 1 liter,

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)

... and that is also equal to 1.000 liters.

1 m³ = 1.000 Liters

Megaliters (ML)

Cubic Centimeter (cc)

1 m³ = 1.000 L = 1.000.000 cm³
(one cubic meter = a thousand liters = a million cubic centimeters)

Cubic Millimeter

More Examples

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