From Feet to Fathoms Lab Activity

From Feet to Fathoms Lab Activity

History:  English units are the historical units of measurement in medieval England which evolved as a combination of the Anglo-Saxon and Roman systems of units. They were redefined in England in 1824 by a Weights and Measures Act, which retained many but not all of the unit names with slightly different values, and again in the 1970s by the International System of Units as a subset of the metric system.  (From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_units)

Guiding Question:  What is the importance of having an International measuring system?  How accurate are old measurements using body parts?

Hypothesis:  (What do you think?) 

It is a lot more accurate than using body parts. Body parts are all different on everyone, so you’ll never get an old English measurement that is the same as the people next door to you if you use body parts.

Materials:

·         Partner

·         Objects in the classroom (whiteboard, desk, hallway, SPACE book, Peep, Crayon box)

·         List of ways to measure: 

Pace:  legs outstretched =1 yard approximately or 1 meter

Egyptian cubit= elbow to tip of the middle finger= 18 inches or 45 cm

Fathom = middle finger to middle finger across the body = 6 feet, 180 cm, 1.8m

Palm = across the palm of the hand = 3 inches or 8 cm

Hand including thumb = 4 inches or 10 cm

Span = from tip of thumb to tip of little finger= 3 palms or 9 inches or 24 cm

English yard = from fingertip of arm to nose = 36 inches or about 1 meter

Foot = 12 “or 30 cm approximately

Fingernail = tip of pinky =1/2 inch = 1 cm.

·         Meter stick or measuring tape

·         Calculator

Procedure: 

1.       Make a data table in your notebook with 7 columns and 7 rows.  (See below).

2.       Choose one of the six objects or distances you will measure.

3.       Determine what form of measurement you will make with the first object. (For example:  Length of the 6^th grade hallway with paces, book with palm or hand, fingernail for crayon box, etc…)

4.       Measure it with the determined form of measurement 3 times, and then find the average. 

5.       Measure it with the meter stick/or measuring tape and find the actual measurement.  (IMPORTANT!!!!!  BE SURE THAT THE UNITS OF MEASUREMENT STAY THE SAME, either inches or centimeters or yards or feet or meters and the average needs to be in the same units)

6.       Repeat the same for each of the five objects that are left and measure it with a different type of measurement, 3 times, find the average and again the actual measurement.

7.       Compare class data results.  Find the average of these results. 

Record & Analyze

Data Table:

Material	Measure-ment Type	Measure-ment #1	Measure-ment #2	Measure-ment #3	Average	Actual Measurement
Peep	Fingernail	12 cm.	13 cm.	14 cm.	13 cm.	14 cm.
Book	Span	40 cm.	40 cm.	40 cm.	40 cm.	32 cm.
Hallway	Foot	38 ft.	45 ft.	39 ft.	40.6 ft.	32 ft.
Whiteboard	Fathom	12 ft.	9 ft.	9 ft.	10 ft.	8.3 ft.
Crayon box	Fingernail	7 cm.	6 cm.	6 cm.	6.3 cm.	7 cm.
Desk/table	Foot	5 ft.	6 ft.	5 ft. 3 in.	5.43 ft.	4.5 ft.

Data Analysis: 

What patterns or relationships do you see between the forms of measurement, the averages you and your partner got and the actual measurement for each object? 

They were all rather close, but still a bit off because we all don’t have the same length of arms and feet. The two that were the least accurate were the hallway and the book! I think it was mainly because our feet are not 12 inches long, and for the book, we weren’t being very clever so we said two spans for everyone even though it was probably something like one and a half. The most accurate was the peep because fingernails are accurate on small things.

Conclusion:  How effective were the old English forms of measurement compared to using the meter stick or measuring tape?

The old English forms of measuring are very inaccurate compared to the meter stick. Think about it, have you seen any group of people that have exactly the same size of body parts? Probably not, mainly because we’re all different and none of us are an exact replica of someone else. There for when you want to measure something, an adult measuring it would probably have half of what a child would get when measuring with the same technique.

What is the importance of having an International measuring system? 

The important thing is that wherever you are measuring from and whatever you are measuring, it will be exactly the same as someone else’s result so you can compare the two different things you measured without being worried that somehow you are wrong or have a different system.

Answer the guiding question here. Was your hypothesis correct in the beginning?  If no, what do you think now?

 Yes, my hypothesis was very correct, because if you use pure logic and nothing else, you can figure out that no one is the same and that measuring with any body parts would get you a different result than your classmate.

Which objects were the easiest or most accurate to measure?  Which form of measurement did you prefer the most?  State why for both questions.  Give examples to help you explain.

The peep for me was the easiest because using the finger nail on a small object is easy. My favorite type of measurement was using the finger nail because it is the most accurate and when we used it (as you can see on the chart above) it was the one closest to the real measurement!

Further inquiry: What improvements would you make next time?

For some of them, we were tired of being precise so instead of saying six and a fourth we just said six, so it had some differences with the average and the real measurement. We should have actually taken every inch/cm./meter/foot seriously so our average could have looked more like the final measurement.

What errors did you and your partner make? Do you have any further questions about measurement?  If so, what were they?

My two partners and I didn’t make any mistakes other than the ones above. My only questions are, ‘When did they invent the metric system and the American system?’, and, ‘How did the teachers correct something if they used old English measurement, since everyone’s answer would be different?’