Measuring

📖 In short

Measuring means finding out how long, heavy, big or hot something is, or how much time it takes. We measure every day: our height, the weight of fruit at the market, the time it takes to get to school and how much water is in a glass.

🤩 Did you know?

The oldest known scales were found in ancient Egyptian tombs thousands of years old.
The word “centi” means one part of a hundred.
The second is the smallest unit of time we use every day.
Some countries measure length in inches and feet instead of centimeters and meters.

🔎 Find out more

🌟 Units of measurement

We measure length in meters and centimeters, weight in kilograms and grams, liquids in liters, time in hours, minutes and seconds, and temperature in degrees.

🔍 Measuring long ago

Long ago people measured with their bodies: the hand span, the forearm, the foot and the step. But people's arms are different, so measurements differed, and that's why people agreed on fixed units.

💡 The metric system

Most of the world today uses the metric system, which is easy because it's based on ten: a meter is 100 centimeters, a kilometer 1000 meters, and a kilogram 1000 grams.

🎯 Measuring tools

We measure with rulers and tape measures, scales, measuring jugs, clocks and thermometers. Choose the right tool: we don't measure a road with a ruler!

🧩 Test yourself

1 What do we measure weight in?

2 How many centimeters are in a meter?

3 Which picture shows “Measuring”?

🧪 Discover more

📷 Picture sources: Wikimedia Commons

Martinvl · CC BY-SA 3.0