What's the moral of this story? Units save lives! Teach measurement conversion through storytelling in a quick math-based lesson. Young scientists learn how one country's decision to swap from imperial to metric standard units caused an emergency airplane landing, then perform the calculations that could have prevented the mishap.

Concepts

standard units of measurement, density, metric conversions, the metric system, converting measurements, airplanes, flight

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Additional Tags

science

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Instructional Ideas

• Open the lesson by asking the class how easy or difficult they think it would be for a country to change its measurement units to a different system
• Have students conduct research into other occasions where using incorrect units of measurement has made a big difference in the outcome of a situation
  

Classroom Considerations

• Pupils should have a basic understanding of density and how it is calculated 
• For younger learners, show some examples of common imperial measurements in metric form to provide a frame of reference
  

Pros

• The scenario is impactful and adds interest to the lesson
• Teacher's guide includes an answer key
  

Cons

• None

Common Core

RST.6-8.2 RST.9-10.2