The metric prefixes themselves can act as labels that can be placed in front of various base units. So here we have base units for volume in the form of liters. In terms of time, we use seconds. The base units for the amount of a substance is moles and for electrical current, amperes. Notice that some of these common base units are also connected to our SI base units.
Now the metric prefixes themselves are the variables that we place in front of each of these base units. So for liters, we could plug in front of it milli, so milliliters, milli being the metric prefix that we're placing in front of the base unit of liters. For seconds, we could do nanoseconds. For moles, we could do gigamoles, and for amperes, we could do kiloamperes.
Here all that's happening is I'm taking each one of these metric prefixes and placing them in front of one of these base units. This is key when it comes to metric prefix conversions. So click on the next video and let's take a look at how do we go from one metric prefix to a new one.