How many mcg tables equal 1 mg tablet?

Answer 1

Answer #1

How many mg in 1 mcg? The answer is 0.001.

mcg is 1 millionth of a gram. mg is the symbol for milligram, 1 thousandth of a gram.

For example:

100 micrograms = 0.1 milligram

1000 micrograms = 1 mg

Answer #2ERROR! ------ 1 MCG IS not "1 millionth of a gram", AS STATED ABOVE.

1 mcg is one THOUSANDTH of a gram. One Thousand mcg equals One milligram.

Answer #3Nope, the first guy is right (answer #1). Your confusion (answer #2) is probably because

• "milli-" means a thousand parts, NOT a million parts.
• "micro" is a million parts

This may seem counter-intuitive because "milli" is pretty close to "million", but the nomenclature doesn't work exactly the same with small parts.

Another reason you are making this mistake is a "milli-" of something, gram in this case, is written out as 0.001 which intuitively seems to be more like 100 than 1,000 parts. All of this stems to the very beginning of the SI prefix chart.

If we start with the number 1 and move the decimal place one to the LEFT, we get a "deca-" and it is shown as 10. If we instead move the decimal one to the RIGHT we get 0.1, NOT 0.01. That is where your brain is confusing everything. Just remember the decimal is one place less than you think it is when you go smaller than 0. So centi- is a hundredth so we might think it is 0.001 when actually it is 0.01. And nano- is a billionth, but it is not 0.000 000 000 1, it's 0.000 000 001.

1 mcg is NOT a thousandth of a gram.

1 mcg = 1 microgram = 1 µgram

1 mcg = 1x10-6 grams = 1/1,000,000 gram = 1 millionth of a gram

To further clear up confusion, it may be beneficial to have comparison benchmarks:

100 n/a n/a One

10-1 d deci- Tenth

10-2 c centi- Hundredth

10-3 m milli- Thousandth

10-6 µ (mc)micro- Millionth

10-9 n nano- Billionth

10-12 p pico- Trillionth

10-15 f femto- Quadrillionth

10-18 a atto- Quintillionth

So using chart above which is RIGHT, we can see the first guy takes the difference of

g --> µg (mcg) (the "g" is the SI abbreviation for "gram")

1 of 100, which is 1.

And 1 of 10-6, which is .000001

Take the difference (6-0=6) and there is 1x10-6 or 1 million parts composing 1 part of the gram.

To get to thousands to millionths

milligrams --> micrograms

mg --> µg (mcg) (the "g" is the SI abbreviation for "gram")

m --> mc

1x10-3 --> 1x10-6

Take the difference (6-3=3) and we find there is 1x10-3 or 1 Thousand parts composing 1 part of the milligram.