Formatting for dimensional analysis

Question

I'd like to typeset a problem solution highlighting dimensional analysis in LaTeX. What is the best way to format the following in LaTeX?

  1.345 g | 0.5 L | 1000 cm^3
 ---------|-------|----------- =  0.6725 g
   cm^3   |       |   1 L

I could use a table I guess but that seems wrong. A set of \frac commands would also work but not give exactly the same visual affect. (It would be really nice to cancel the units in the expression as well). Aside from digging into pstricks is there a better way to do this?

Answer 1

You could definitely use \frac to write the LHS components, and the cancel package provides a diagonal strike-through of elements. Here's a minimal example:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{cancel}% http://ctan.org/pkg/cancel
\begin{document}
\[
  \frac{1.345\,\textrm{g}}{1\,\cancel{\textrm{cm}^3}}\,
    \frac{0.5\,\cancel{\textrm{L}}}{1}\,
    \frac{1000\,\cancel{\textrm{cm}^3}}{1\,\cancel{\textrm{L}}}=0.6725\,\textrm{g}
\]
​\end{document}​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

If the SW-NE diagonal crossing through L is visually unappealing, cancel also provides \bcancel, as well as xcancel (a combination of \cancel and \bcancel). The siunitx package can also be used to write numerals with units in a standard way.