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nikipedia's avatar

Can you help me convert from nanomoles/liter to picograms/liter?

Asked by nikipedia (28095points) February 8th, 2012

I think sometime in 2003 when I took general chemistry I must have done this correctly at least once on an exam. But I have been doing this problem over and over, and I can’t get a logical answer.

I am reading a paper that measures progesterone levels in nmol/L. I need to convert this to pg/mL.

I think the relevant conversion factor is the molecular weight of progesterone, which is about 314 grams per mole.

But when I work it all out, I am off by 9 orders of magnitude.

Help!

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3 Answers

XOIIO's avatar

Usually you can just type an equation into google and it solves it, but here is a picogram converter that has what you need.

BhacSsylan's avatar

So, part of the problem is the units you are using. It’s important to always always check your units. I don’t know the exact problem you’re having, but if you’re off by orders of magnitude this is probably what’s going wrong.

nmol = 10^-9 moles

pg = 10^-12 grams

and ml = 10^-3 liters

and molecular mass is in g/mol. So you either have to convert that to nanomoles and picograms, or convert the concentrations to moles and grams, and then convert everything to either mL or L before you can do anything with all those numbers.

Does that help?

Also, for example, if it was 10 nmol/L, that would be 10×10^-9 moles/L

so 10×10^-9 moles/L * 314 g/mol = 3.14×10^-6 g/L

3.14×10^-6 g/L * 10^-3 L/mL = 3.14×10^-9 g/mL

3.14×10^-9 g/mL * 10^12 pg/g = 3140 pg/mL

That in the right ballpark?

LuckyGuy's avatar

Lets’s see if we can do thins in our heads
nmol/L.—> pg/mL.

Put them both into mL by dividing the left side top and bottom by 1000.
pmol/mL
We know a mole is 319 gm
So 319 pg /mL = 1 nmol/L;

Make sense?

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