Kilometer to Meter Converter

Our kilometer to meter converter is a simple and specific tool that can help you with the conversion between distances you travel by car and distances you cover in the span of a few minutes. Keep reading this short article to learn:

• What are kilometers and meters;
• How to convert from kilometer to meter; and
• Examples of conversion from km to m.

And much more.

The length was the first quantity affected by the metrication process at the peak of the Enlightenment period in France. The meter was adopted as the base unit for length. From this human-scale measurement unit, simple divisions and multiplications by $10$ and its powers provided us with many units suitable for every possible usage.

The kilometer is one of these derived units: it takes its name from the meter and the Greek word for thousand. While the meter is perfectly suitable to measure people or objects, we can manipulate it with little effort; the kilometer measures the distance between cities. Since on scales much larger than the dimensions of a moderately-sized country, our brains start to miss the true meaning of length; we also specify planetary-scale distances and interplanetary distances with the kilometer simply by attaching the units to large numbers (have you ever wondered why a million kilometers sounds more fitting than a billion meters?).

Let's learn how to convert kilometers to meters and vice-versa!

The conversion between km and m is straightforward, thanks to the regularity of the metric system. A kilometer corresponds to a thousand meters. We can write this conversion in this form:

where we can see the origin of the prefix kilo-, or, to highlight even more the power of the metric system, use the scientific notation:

here we see how meters and kilometers are three orders of magnitude away from each other. Between them we can find the decameter ($10^1\ \mathrm{m}$) and the hectometer ($10^2\ \mathrm{m}$), two metric yet not commonly used units.

Convert from km to m

If you have a measure in kilometers and you want to convert kilometers to meters, simply multiply by $1000$. If you're going to perform the opposite operation, divide the measure in meters by $1000$.

To remember which one to use, remember that the meter is much smaller than the kilometer; hence when performing the conversion from kilometers to meters, you should expect the magnitude of your measure to increase (multiplication by $1000$).

Take the distance between the White House and the U.S. Capitol in kilometers: $d = 2.525\ \mathrm\ \mathrm{km}$. Let's bring it down to a larger number that is more representative, for example, of the number of steps you need to take to move from one monument to the other.

Apply the formula to convert from kilometers to meters:

That's it! Easy as pie.

If you found our km to m converter useful, keep in mind our other length conversion tools: they span from very specific tools for the conversion of rather obscure measurement units to generalist tools that can convert between almost all the units you can imagine. Try our:

• The yard to meter conversion;
• The meter conversion;
• The mm to km conversion
• The meter to mile converter;
• The feet to yards conversion;
• The yard conversion;
• The yard to mile converter;
• The inches to yard conversion;
• The km to feet conversion; and
• The cm to km conversion.