National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network
Noodling Around: Powers of Ten
How many noodles long is your classroom? Find out when engineers of all ages explore measurement through the use of pool noodles. With the noodles pre-cut to certain metric lengths, the activities could be used to introduce the metric...
Teach Engineering
What is a Nanometer?
Teams learn about the size of a nanometer by measuring objects and converting those measurements. A worksheet then tests the groups' abilities to use nanometers by having them determine the size of objects that are too small to...
Curated OER
Ant and Elephant
Have you ever wondered how many ants make up an elephant? Inquisitive minds will be amazed as they use scientific notation to compute and compare the mass of an elephant to an ant. Have participants make guesses and see how close they...
Illustrative Mathematics
Paper Clip
With minimal setup and maximum freedom, young geometers are encouraged to think outside the box on a seemingly simple application problem. Though the task seems simple, measuring a given paper clip and finding how many 10 meters can...
National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network
Shrink Me!
The incredibly shrinking meter—decimeters to centimeters, to millimeters, and now to nanometers! Learners may have a difficult time visualizing particles on a nanoscale. Help them see a little clearer using a well-designed lesson...
Exploratorium
Tired Weight
You don't need a scale to determine weight. This activity provides a way to use the concepts of air pressure and surface area to determine the weight of a vehicle by calculating the amount of weight each tire supports.
![American Chemical Soc.: Best of Wonder Science: Measure Yourself in Metric [Pdf] Activity](https://d15y2dacu3jp90.cloudfront.net/images/attachment_defaults/resource/large/FPO-knovation.png "American Chemical Soc.: Best of Wonder Science: Measure Yourself in Metric [Pdf] Activity")
American Chemical Society
American Chemical Soc.: Best of Wonder Science: Measure Yourself in Metric [Pdf]
Activities where students take turns measuring their height, the width of parts of the hand, and the distance jumped using metric units.
SRI International
Performance Assessment Links in Science: Tree Study (Lesson)
For this fourth grade performance task, students measure tree leaves using metric units and make predictions about the length of other leaves on the tree. They also suggest other good questions they might ask about trees in the school...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Robot Wheels!
Students solidify their understanding of the terms "circumference" and "rotation" through the use of LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robotics components. They measure the circumference of robot wheels to determine how far the robot can travel during...
Math Is Fun
Math Is Fun: Metric Length
The different units used to measure metric length are described, with comparisons to real world objects. A wonderful number line also shows the relative sizes of things all the way from a quark to the universe in powers of ten.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Give an Inch, Take a Foot
Students practice measuring techniques by measuring different objects and distances around the classroom. They practice using different scales of measurement in metric units and estimation. Also, students learn how measurement is used in...