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?) I think that most of the measurements are going to be quite accurate and some might be a little off but not by much. I also think that me and my partner are good to be partners because we are different size. He is small and I am tall. So in that perspective we can look at 2 different points of view.

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:

Object	Measure-ment Type	Measure-ment #1	Measure-ment #2	Measure-ment #3	Average	Actual Measurement
Peep	Palm	15cm	16cm	13cm	14cm	14cm
Book	Span	18inch	18inch	18inch	18inch	13inch
Hallway	Pace	9 ½ meters	10 meters	8 ½ meters	9½meters		10meters
Whiteboard	Fathom	9ft	8ft	9ft	9ft	9ft
Crayon box	fingertips	6cm	6cm	5cm	6cm	7cm
Desk/table	Fathom	5ft	4 ½ ft	5ft	4 ½ ft	4 ½ ft

Graph: You may choose to make a graph to make the data easier to analyze. Highlight the Object column and Average and Actual Measurement columns and Insert bar graph. You may decide to translate all the units into either inches or centimeters for the averages and actual measurements which may make it easier to analyze as well, but BE AWARE that this may ruin your results.

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?

I saw that in each on of the tests we got a different result except for the Book. The average that me and my partner got were very close or even the exact number to the real answer.

Conclusion: How effective were the old English forms of measurement compared to using the meter stick or measuring tape? What is the importance of having an International measuring system? How accurate are old measurements using body parts?. Was your hypothesis correct in the beginning? If no, what do you think now? 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.

I think that the Old English measurements were very accurate. Sometimes they were a little off but not by too much. I think that the importance of having the International measuring system is because everyone needs to be able to measure things. Take the Metric system for an example, if people didn’t know, or learn how to use the metric system, then what would they do? So that is why there are multiple systems in measuring. The guiding question states “How accurate are old measurements using body parts?” I think that when I and my partner were measuring the objects we were very close to the original length of the object. Sometimes there might have been a slight difference because we were to different heights and I was bigger and he was smaller. My hypothesis states “I think that most of the measurements are going to be quite accurate and some might be a little off but not by much. I also think that me and my partner are good to be partners because we are different size. He is small and I am tall. So in that perspective we can look at 2 different points of view.” In my hypothesis I think that I was mostly rite, because we got different answers each time. I also think that my hypothesis was right when I said that we were going to have to different points of view. I think that the easiest objects to measure were the hallway and the book because those were the two most accurate measurements in the hole test. I think that the measurement that I was most comfortable with using was the pace because I have very long legs and it is very easy for me to stretch them out and make a big step like a meter.

Further inquiry: What improvements would you make next time? What errors did you and your partner make? Do you have any further questions about measurement? If so, what were they?

I think that I would make more test runs just to make sure that the measurements are accurate. I think that I and my partner didn’t really make very accurate attempts to measure the objects with our body parts.