One milligram is equal to 10 centigrams. This relationship comes from the metric system’s base-10 structure, where each unit is a power of ten. Since ‘centi-‘ means one hundredth (1/100) and ‘milli-‘ means one thousandth (1/1000), we can see that:
1 milligram (mg) = 0.1 grams (g)
1 centigram (cg) = 0.01 grams (g)
Therefore, when you convert milligrams to centigrams, you multiply by 10, because there are 100 milligrams in a gram and each gram can be divided into 100 centigrams. So, 1 mg = 10 cg. This simple conversion can be incredibly useful in various fields such as chemistry, medicine, and nutrition where accurate measurements are crucial.