Units & Systems

The fictional story of the blueberry farmer illustrates the efficiency of having standardized units of measurement.

Discuss the standards for liquid and dry measurements. Many students will not have seen examples of a peck, bushel, or barrel.

Ask students to think about why this terminology is no longer widely used. Why would these terms of measurement be included in a textbook in 1914 but not today?

You may also want to talk about the seemingly arbitrary nature of selecting units for measurement. This discussion may be helpful for students when they get to the design activity.

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In this activity, student groups design a new system of measurement. This activity is designed for groups of four students and may be completed quickly if all students participate.

Explain to students that the criteria for developing an effective system of measurement are on the clipboard image.

Emphasize that they should keep these in mind as they create their measurement systems. Their systems will be evaluated on these criteria during their presentations.

Have groups use the space on the next page as a workspace for developing their systems.

Additional examples:

Proposed base unit (with scaled units in parentheses)

• Length or distance: the mano (manito, mano, manisimo)
• Volume: the brick (brack, bricky, brick, and the brick-crick)
• Capacity: the gulp (minigulp, gulp, big gulp)
• Mass: the skittle (skittette, skittle, skittanic)

Use the provided templates to help students prepare their presentations.

You may want to provide groups with a larger piece of paper so that more than one student can work on the poster or page simultaneously.

After they have completed their posters or pages, have students practice their presentations.

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Ask each team to present their system to the class. Have the other teams sit together while listening to the presentations. Encourage presenters to answer a few questions from the class.

After each presentation, all teams should discuss the system, evaluate it according to the criteria, and tally the score. Ask one member of each team to record the score.

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After the presentations, spend a few minutes as a class evaluating the invented systems. Then ask teams to determine the most effective system through discussion.

Finally, have all students write why the highest-rated group earned its high ratings.

Evaluating the Invented Systems

Look at the ratings you applied on your scorecards to determine the most effective measurement system designed by your classmates.

Which system has units that relate to one another in the most logical way?

Which system is most easily learned?

Which system could be used in the widest variety of places and situations?

Do any of the systems work as well as or better than the measurement system that you actually use for this purpose?

Rank and Write

Which system did your team rate the highest? Please summarize what led you to your decision: