What's an Easy Way to Convert Meters to Feet?

Remember, the Death Star's exhaust port was 2 meters wide. To figure out what that means in terms of footage, we're going to multiply 3.28 by 2. Here's the calculation:

2 x 3.28 = 6.56

Boy, that's — not a lot. Evidently, the target General Dodonna wanted someone to hit was only 6.56 feet wide. Good thing Luke Skywalker had the force on his side.

If you're out in the real world and need to do a quick conversion, then multiplying the number of meters by 3.28 will give you the answer you're looking for.

You could make this process even easier by rounding 3.28084 up to 3.3.

So, in a pinch, all you'd need to remember is:

If you're trying to do this in your head, use a conversion of 3 and add 10 percent.

Before we proceed any further, it's time to finally acknowledge the asterisk. If you're taking a math class and the teacher expects you to show your work, then the technique we outline above is a no-go.

Know why? Because strictly speaking, it doesn't change the units.

Remember, we started out with 2 meters. And multiplying 2 meters by the number 3.28 technically gives you 6.56 meters — and not 6.56 feet.

Here's the teacher-approved strategy for converting meters into feet.

Time to write out the actual equation (for simplicity's sake, let's reuse the same "Death Star" example). Here she is:

2 m/1 x (3.28 ft/1 m) = 6.56 ft

The division by 1 might seem pointless. But we need it to do our conversion. Because of their placement within this equation, the two m's will cancel each other out. That leaves us with only one unit notation in the entire math problem: "ft" (i.e., "feet"). Therefore, our final answer will have to be written in feet, rather than meters. Which is exactly what we wanted.

Here is a converter to help you if you're in a hurry:

All right, now that we've figured out how to exchange meters for feet, let's do the exact opposite. Who's up for another pop culture memory jog?

The 2005 "King Kong" remake finds the giant ape on his native Skull Island, where he lives out his days behind an enormous wall. Lumpy (a ship's cook played by Andy Serkis) claims this structure is 100 feet high.

Tell us: What's the wall's height in meters? We've got to find out what poor Kong's up against here.

As you know by now, there are 3.28 feet in 1 meter.

Outside the classroom, the quick and painless method for converting meters into feet is as follows: Divide the relevant number of feet by 3.28. Or, if you're cool with rounding, divide it by 3.3.

Here's that formula:

(Number of Feet) ÷ 3.3 = (Number of Meters)

100 ÷ 3.3 = 30.3

So, the hairy monster is confined by a 30.3-meter wall. That'd be a much bigger target for our buddy Luke Skywalker, but we digress.

Note: Once again, we've gotten the answer we sought — but neglected to change the units. So, now we're going to do it the way your math teacher would love.

To cover your bases on a final exam and make your math professors happy, you'd have to execute something similar to the three-step process we outlined before. This time, your equation would look like so:

100 ft/1 x (1 m/3.28 ft) = 30.48 meters

In an inversion of what we saw last time, the "ft" unit appears twice, while the "m" shows up only once. Therefore, it's the ft's that will be canceled out.