Math and Measurements

Young learners sometimes regard math as boring, often because they see little application to real-life situations. While it’s true that solving sums and doing algebra for their own sake may not excite some students, math can be made more appealing to math-averse students when they are shown how it can be used to solve real-life problems. One use of math that demonstrates its everyday applications is measurement.

In the real world, we need measurements for all kinds of things. If it weren’t for measurement, how would you know how much flour to add to a cookie recipe? Or determine how tall you are, or how much money you have? We use measurement for things we need or want, for work and for play. Once someone understands these connections, measurement can make math seem much more appealing, and perhaps even fun.

At its most basic, measurement is a standard amount of something. Measurement can help a person understand the quantity of one item in relation to the other—for example, the amount of orange juice contained in a certain bottle compared to the capacity of the glass it may be poured into. A person who realizes this can quickly see how measurement is a constant factor in our daily lives.

And the fact is that almost everything can be measured in some way—be it time, weight, height, temperature, length, volume, density, distance, velocity, thickness, etc. The knowledge we glean from measurement helps us plan daily activities such as school and study time, or know how much time we spend on our favorite board and video games. It helps us get accurate information and statistics about a particular subject, project or topic. Understanding measurement can help even young children stay on track with many aspects of their lives.

Measuring Distance, Height and Weight

Do you know you can use your feet as a distance-measuring tool?

You may be wondering how that’s possible. Well, you can keep putting one foot in front of the other to measure the distance between your house and your neighbor’s house, and then convert the number of steps into a real measurement. If you took 15 toe-to-heel steps to the house next door, for example, you could use that info to convert your footsteps into a standard measurement. Suppose your foot is 10cm long. In that case, those 15 steps equal 150cm. With a bit of math, you can even convert simple measurements like this into kilometers, feet or miles.

When you go to a doctor’s office, they often check your height, and record it using feet and inches, or sometimes centimeters, to see how much you have grown since your last visit. At the same time, they may check your weight and record it as well.

When students see how they can use measurement math to figure out travel time to grandma’s based on distance, see how rapidly they have grown, or understand how to bake their favorite cookies, math itself becomes more intriguing.

Measuring Liquids

Have you ever thought about the volume of your favorite drink or soda? Or how much warm milk you had before bed? Do you know how many liters of water you drink every day? Or every week, month or year?

I’m guessing nobody crams all these minor details in their head.

But sometimes you just need to know. Suppose, for example, that you have been advised to drink about 2 liters of water a day. You’re clearly not going to drink it all at once. But learning about standard volume measurements can make it easier to spread that consumption out over the day. If you know that 1 liter equals 500 centiliters, you will know that if you drink 500 centiliters four times a day, you’ll have reached your goal.

Do Schools Use Measurement?

You can see from the examples above how understanding measurements also can help young students master the basics of math—addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

Those are also good things for students to know if they wish to understand how schools themselves use measurement to quantify their pupils’ academic success. Measuring their students’ success and failure helps teachers ascertain whether those kids have reached a level of understanding that allows them to move on to the next level. Schools do this by gathering together and examining all of a student’s scores—which are measurements—for the year’s assignments, quizzes, projects and exams to figure out whether he or she has matched or exceeded the cut-off to move on to the next grade.

And that is just one more example of how measurements—as a part of math—is all around us, helping us to get accurate information, manage our time and make the best use of our resources.

The writer is a high school student based in Nigeria.