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NCERT Solutions for Class 5th Maths Chapter 8 How heavy is an ant? — Milligram

Book page 108 Updated on2026-09-19

Q1.
How much weight can an ant carry? How much does an ant weigh?
Answer

An ant weighs only 1 milligram to 5 milligrams. It can carry far more than its own weight.

  1. An ant is so light that grams are too big a unit for it. We use milligrams (mg), the smallest weight unit in this chapter.
  2. An ant's own weight is between 1 mg and 5 mg.
  3. An ant can pick up a load many times heavier than itself and walk away with it — a leaf, a grain of sugar, a dead insect much bigger than its own body.
1 g = 1,000 mg
So a 5 mg ant is only 5 parts out of 1,000 parts of one gram
You would need about 200 ants to make just 1 gram (200 × 5 mg = 1,000 mg)
Why this is amazing: If a child weighing 30 kg could lift like an ant, that child would walk about carrying a small car. An ant's body is tiny, so its legs are short and thick for their size, and that makes them very strong for the weight they carry.
Try this: Next time you see a line of ants near some spilt sugar, watch one carrying a grain. Compare the grain with the ant's body. That is the load it is carrying.
Q2.
What is a milligram?
Answer

A milligram is a very tiny unit of weight. 1,000 milligrams make 1 gram. We write it as mg.

1 g = 1,000 mg
1 kg = 1,000 g = 10,00,000 mg
mg g kg × 1,000 × 1,000 Going the other way (kg → g → mg) you divide by 1,000 eachtime.
The weight ladder. Each step up is 1,000 times bigger.
Where you will meet milligrams: on a medicine strip (a tablet may say 500 mg), on a gold ornament bill at the jeweller's, and in the tiny weights a chemist uses. Anything so light that grams would be a clumsy unit.
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