Measurement
Measurement is a topic your students have been exposed to since the early elementary grades.
These sites offer either more advanced work or in-depth historical information for middle grades students.
Mathematics and science owe a great deal to the Greek mathematician Archimedes,
including a way to approximate pi. Here is historical information along with an applet that allows users to
replicate his approach. Students can approximate pi as a number between the lengths of the perimeters of two
polygons, one inscribed inside a circle and one circumscribed around the circle. The number of sides for the
polygons may be increased to 96 with the value for pi always lying between the two approximations.
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A seventh-grade teacher uses this activity as a way to introduce irrational numbers.
Diana Funke has her students make a pi necklace for Pi Day to reinforce the idea that the decimal part of some
numbers never repeats or ends. They assign a color to each digit (including 0) and then string beads of those
colors into a necklace, using the digits of pi as their guide.
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This Internet project is hands-on, real-world, and historical. Students join with classes around
the world to repeat the experiment of Eratosthenes — measuring the shadow of a meter stick and making
calculations to approximate the circumference of Earth.
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This interesting and clearly written article explains Eratosthenes' famous measurement
of the circumference of the Earth and discusses the mystery surrounding the accuracy of that measurement.
A key element in the mystery is the ancient unit of length used in the measurement: the stade.
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Here you will find detailed scientific information related to the creation of the meter.
The text does a fine job connecting the scientific theory behind the metric system to the practical efforts of
Mechain and Delambre. The development of the meter,
first as a bar and then as a specific distance measured by light, is covered in an easy-to-understand format,
well suited to both teachers and students.
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The stomachion is an ancient tangram-type puzzle. Believed by some to have been created by Archimedes,
it consists of 14 pieces cut from a square. In this activity on measurement, students learn about the history of
the stomachion, use the pieces to create other figures, and investigate the areas of the pieces. ( From
Illuminations, National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Vision for School Mathematics -
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This part of a virtual museum produced by the National Institute of Standards and
Technology explores weights and measures and is divided into museum "rooms." Of special interest, Room 1
focuses on the American colonies before there were standard weights and measures. Room 4 shows a platinum-iridium
bar, cast sometime between 1875 and 1889, that was used as a standard of measure for the meter in the United States.
Room 8 is filled with interesting information and objects that offer a social history of weights and measures,
including the part weights and measures play when we buy gas at the service station or milk at the supermarket.
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Copyright
January 2008 — The Ohio State University. This material is based upon work
supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0424671. Any
opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this
material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of
the National Science Foundation.
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This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons License.
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