So, I was looking at something the other day, and it listed a height as 1.68 meters. Now, I don’t really think in meters day-to-day, especially for height. I always picture things in feet and inches, you know?

My first step was just trying to get a quick answer. I went over to my computer, opened up a search engine, and just typed it right in: what is 1.68 m in feet. Pretty straightforward.
Instantly, I got a result back. It spat out a number, something like 5.51 feet. Okay, that gives me a rough idea. It’s over five and a half feet tall.
Figuring it out myself
But then I got curious, like, how does that actually break down? I wanted to work it out manually, just to see. I remembered there’s a conversion factor between meters and feet.
I did another quick search just for the conversion rate. Found it pretty easily: 1 meter is equal to about 3.28084 feet. Okay, got the number I needed.
So, I grabbed my calculator (well, the calculator app on my computer). I punched in:
1.68 3.28084
The result came back as 5.5118112.
Alright, that matches the first quick answer. 5 feet, and then a bit more than half a foot (.5118112 of a foot, to be exact).

Getting the inches
Now, we don’t usually say “five point five one feet” when talking height. We use feet and inches. So, I needed to figure out what that “.5118112” part is in inches. I know there are 12 inches in a foot.
So, back to the calculator. I took just the decimal part:
0.5118112 12
That gave me 6.1417344 inches.
So, rounding it a little bit, maybe just to the nearest inch or even half inch, that’s basically 6 inches. A tiny bit over, but close enough for general talk.
The final result
So, after going through that little process, I figured out that 1.68 meters is basically 5 feet and 6 inches tall. It’s always handy to actually work through these things sometimes, helps it stick in your head better than just looking up the answer.