Measuring Up Metric

Custom Glove Maker Switches to Metric Measurements

The All-Star Industrial Workglove Company needs help. They plan to recalibrate all of their systems for making gloves from the U.S. customary system to the metric system. They are asking for people to submit as much data as possible from measuring a human hand.

Here are some examples of ways to measure a hand:

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This activity challenges students to think about the possibilities of measurement.

Paraphrase:

The All-Star Industrial Workglove Company is recalibrating their machines to metric measurements. The company has asked the students to help by thinking about all the possible ways to measure a hand.

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Measure a Hand

Your task (with a partner) is to:

• Think of every possible way to measure different aspects of a human hand.

• Specify landmarks on the hand that will standardize how this aspect will be measured.
• For example, "The palm width is measured at the narrowest part of the hand, but without bending the palm."

• Measure and record as much data as possible.
• Organize and submit your data to All-Star in a format that is easy to understand, packed with information, and in only metric measurements.

Have student pairs work together to agree upon how to go about the measuring of the hand and the means for obtaining helpful data. The student page has a few examples.

Some student pairs may decide that they want a three-dimensional hand for measurement and can use one of their own hands for this activity. This idea would allow creative measurements such as ring size. With this approach, students may become more innovative and use a string to measure the circumference of their fingers.

Instruct the students to use the graph paper (template included) to record their data in a logical way.

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Note: Some teachers choose to use this activity to teach students how to use displacement to measure the volume of irregularly shaped items.

Use the blank image of the hand on your projector. Drawing directly over the outline of a hand, record as a class what the groups have identified as an aspect of the hand to measure. In a separate table, record the data for that aspect so that you get a sense of the range.

Paraphrase:

Let's record all the different ways the groups have discovered for measuring a hand, and the range of measurements for each way.

Write It Up for the All-Star Industrial Workglove Company Manual

Congratulations! The All-Star Industrial Workglove Company loves your system of measuring hands. You got this memo from the head of the Product Department.

We are very pleased with the thoroughness of your approach to measuring hands. We would like to hire you to write the part of our employee manual. We need something which will explain careful hand measuring to both our current employees and new hires.

As you know, our company has recently switched to the metric system. Please remember to be sensitive to the employees who are anxious about the change to the old way of doing things. You should write instructions to the employees on how to measure hands, while being mindful that the machines have recently been recalibrated to metric units so all hand measurements must be in metric units.

Sincerely,

Finn Gerlach

All-Star Industrial Workglove Company

Product Department

Explain your system of hand measuring. Add a diagram to help explain your hand-measuring system.

Using the focus words can help you make a better argument:

meter • degree • convert • factor • scale • abbreviate

The writing prompt asks students to write the section of The All-Star Industrial Workglove Company’s employee manual that explains hand measuring, with a particular emphasis on volume.

They should write instructions to the employees on how to measure hands, while being mindful that the machines have recently been recalibrated to metric units so all hand measurements must be in metric units.

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