Yeah.
How tall are you? Three feet tall, four feet
56 And what's meant by feet.
Whose feet? Whose foot are we using? Not mine.
Nobody asked to use mine. Did they ask to use yours?
So most people's feet are different sizes? What about
other units of measure? 12 miles.
Height of a horse is measured in hands.
Rangers 16 hands tall. So if your
foot isn't equal to a foot, her hand is an equal to a hand.
Even inform isn't really an inch. A pinch isn't really
a pen. Maybe a yard is more than a
yard on a meter nowhere near the size of the
meter. A leader? Well, in
short, could all the units of measurement we used to measure things be
misunderstood. In the next few weeks, you
and I will look at how a foot got to be a foot. How a
yard got to be a yard. In other words, how did we
all ever come to agree on the standard length of an inch, a
foot and a yard and so forth?
How did we arrive at the standards for each of these and a lot of
other units of measure in the everyday world of work,
school and play. Hi, my name is
Miles Mick Leader. My life is all about measuring
things matter. Effect all of these
things. Hoops Phone. I got to get
that. I gotta go.
I got it.
Hey, don't worry, it's for me. Miles. Big Leader.
Oh, hi Meter. No, probably,
I don't know. Hold on. I'll ask them. It's my brother meter back
leader. He's a tailor's apprentice and he is working at a clothing store. It, of course,
the major's people all the time. So he wants to know if we could. If he can join us for a
measuring Siri's, you don't mind? Do you know? Oh,
good meter. They said they'd love to have you. What's that?
Meter says we should define What? Measurement? ISS. Good idea.
Meter. I'll talk to you later. Bye. Measurement. Let's
see, May German is
well, measurement is using a standard unit to find such
things as the length of something or perhaps a
liquid capacity of something.
Hello, Miles MK Leader. Guess who
I know You want to know what standards are. Oh, just a
lucky guess. Well, you know, meter, I think we're going to
have to go beyond definition for this one and way back
into history,
all the way back to the days of the Cave man
and the woolly mammoth.
There we concert for the first attempts at establishing standards for
measuring You see, at some point, even cavemen had to
develop a standard for measuring things.
It's your open. Once upon a time, a very long ago and
very far away. A rope seller and a rope buyer. We're
bickering over how the rope seller sold his rope. It's three
Bali cons of foot. Take it or leave. It gets a
rope. Okay, Okay. But we use my foot to measure.
What? Look, I do the selling My
foot does the measuring. That's the way it is. Good quality.
Roping gets a good we use your foot to measure my
rope. It'll cost me a bloody fortune. Hey,
read the sign. Would you rope three Bali corns of
foot? It's my sign. It's my rope. It's gonna be my
foot. Rope here gets a good quality rope
rope. Just then, a wise man happened along.
Gentlemen, gentlemen, perhaps I can be of
assistance. The cellar anxious to get done with this sale and
onto other business. Was it first rather surly to the wise man
saying, Look what out, buddy? And you? I'm
about at the end of my rope with you three barley cords of foot. They
couldn't leave Well, since you obviously can't agree on whose foot to
use, may I offer mine? Well, both the
buyer and the seller had to agree. The foot before them was not very
small, but it also was not very large. Say
that's a perfect size foot team. It is very nice
and it smells good to your allies. This is
coming into my profits and you realize how this is giving me
less rope for the barley corn. You have perhaps
a better idea. Oh, alright. I suppose if I don't
agree, you won't buy my room. And if I don't
agree, you will sell me your room. And so from
then on, everyone in that far off place used the wise
man's foot as the standard. Everyone was very, very
happy, with the possible exception of the wise man who
became worn to a frazzle, lending his foot to everyone, measuring anything.
So you see, at some point way back when we all got
together and agreed on what the standard units of measure would be and the
type of majoring unit we use. Well, that depends on what you're trying to
measure. If I wanted to know how much water my
water bucket holds, I'd use a standard of measurement having to do with
capacity. If I want to know the length of a brick,
I use linear measurement. Did you know
there isn't a job or a profession that you can think of, which doesn't
use measurement? And that includes
baby mother,
student? What
plummet Dr.
Boyer, taxi driver
and teacher.
We all use measurement each day of our lives.
Let's work our way back in time once again and see how measurement has
evolved over thousands of years.
Once upon a time, thousands and thousands of years
ago, a man named Noah said about building an art to escape the
flood, to threaten to destroy the whole world. Noah wanted
to save his family to each of all the animals in the world.
He wanted to make room in the ark for all of them. So we're talking
about anyway.
In those days, the Cuban was used as a unit of measuring link.
A Cuban is the length of a man's forearm from here
to here, the edge of his elbow to the tip of his middle finger.
Noah build is our using these. The ark was
300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide
and 30 cubits high. Some boat, huh?
By today's measurements, it would have been about 450 feet
long, or the distance of one and 1/2 football
fields. Imagine using nothing but your forearm to measure
better Noah than me. How about you? Incidentally, the
Cuban is no longer used as a unit of measurement, but some of the
customary units we use today originated in the same way by
using parts of the body. One sanction people began using
arms and feet is measuring units well. It was only natural for them to begin
using other parts of the body as well. For instance, the fingers,
hands or legs. Did you know that what today we
call the inch was considered the width of a man's thumb. An inch
was also the distance from the tip of the four finger to the first
joint. This is your forefinger the one right next to your
thumb. So from here to the first joint was an inch
the Babylonian zehr credited with the world's first weight standards.
Instead of just comparing the weights of two objects, they compare
the weight of each object with a set of stones. The
Egyptians and Greeks used a wheat seed as a smallest unit of
weight. The Arabs established a small wait standard for
gold, silver and other precious stones, which were traded
back then. Trading was called Bartering
two Major. These small, valuable quantities. The Arabs used a
small being called a scarab. This was the origin of
the word carrot, which jewelers used today to express the weight of
gems and precious metals. In the 13th
century, King Edward, the first of England, ordered a permanent majoring
stick made of iron, and this was to serve as a master standard
of the yard. It was to be used throughout the kingdom.
This master yardstick was called the iron Older
after the bone of the forearm in the late 17
hundreds. During Napoleon's time, the French government adopted
a whole new system of measurement called the metric system.
This system was based on what they called the meter.
There's a phone again. Don't go away. I'll be right back.
I'm coming. I'm coming. Don't pick it up. I'll get it.
Hello? Oh, hello, Meter. Who
said anything about your knowing Napoleon? Oh, no,
no, no. The meters were talking about our part of the metric
system of measurement. That's right. And we're not
talking. No, that's right. And meter. Did you realize that the
metric system is divided into units or multiples of 10?
And incidentally, did you know that there's only three countries and the
whole world that don't use the metric system?
What are they? Oh, okay. The United States,
Myanmar, which used to be called Burma and
Liberia. Wow, Look at
the time. I'm glad you and I found out what measurements
standards are where they came from and hopefully gave you some
tools to work through some problems you'll face in everyday life
until the next time when we again take the measure of who we
are. By establishing some important mathematical