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If you look at a juice bottle in Europe, you might see 25 cL25\text{ cL}, while a medicine dropper in the US says 5 mL5\text{ mL}, and a milk jug says 1 L1\text{ L}.
All of these measure capacity—the amount of liquid a container can hold—using the metric system.

The Metric Ladder of Capacity

The base unit of liquid capacity is the liter (L\text{L}). Every other unit is just a liter scaled up or down by powers of 1010.
The Latin prefixes tell you the exact size: deci- means one-tenth (0.10.1), centi- means one-hundredth (0.010.01), and milli- means one-thousandth (0.0010.001).
Because each step on the ladder is 1010 times bigger or smaller than the next, converting capacity means moving the decimal point left or right.
What happens when you need to change a large container's measurement into smaller units?

Converting from Larger to Smaller Units

When converting from a larger unit to a smaller unit, you multiply by 1010 for each step down the ladder.
For example, to convert 3.4 L3.4\text{ L} into centiliters (cL\text{cL}), you move 22 steps down (L→dL→cL\text{L} \rightarrow \text{dL} \rightarrow \text{cL}), which means multiplying by 100100:
3.4×100=340 cL3.4 \times 100 = 340\text{ cL}