What is a mile?
A mile is an imperial and US unit of length, exactly 1,609.344 meters. The word comes from the Latin mille passus, 'a thousand paces', where a pace was two steps of a marching legionary.
A mile is equivalent to 1760yds or 5280ft.
Road distances in the US and UK are signed in miles, while nearly every other country uses kilometers. Aviation and shipping use the nautical mile instead, which is a different length (1,852 meters).
What is a meter?
The meter is the SI base unit of length and is equal to 100 centimeters or 1,000 millimeters. It was originally defined as one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the equator along the meridian through Paris. Since 1983 it has been the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.
How do you convert Miles to Meters?
Multiply by 1,609.344. That's exact – the international mile was fixed at that many metres in 1959.
5 miles is 8,046.72 m. A marathon is 26 miles 385 yards, which works out at 42,195 m, slightly more than the 26.2 miles everyone quotes.
In your head, multiply by 8 and divide by 5 to get kilometres, then add three zeros. That turns 5 miles into about 8,000 m, which is under 1% out.
Is there a simple way to convert Miles to Meters in my head?
A mile is 1,609.344 meters (usually rounded to 1,609.34), so multiply miles by that. 2 miles is 3,218.69 meters.
In your head, use 1,600. 3 miles is about 4,800 meters against 4,828 exactly, so it always comes out about 0.6% low.