Measurement With Body Parts

The distance between your nose. Your forearm is about 15 feet 46 centimeters. Hand length heel to fingertip. An average foot is about 12 inches long. Parts of your body can be used to estimate many common units of measurement. The width of your palm is about 4 inches 10 centimeters.

The width of your four fingers where they meet. Use the middle segment of your pointer finger to measure smaller objects which you would normally measure in. Your forearm from elbow to fingertip. Stretch out your hand so that the tip of your thumb is as far away as possible from the tip of your pinky. Convenient but because stretch varies a bit less consistent than these others 22 cm 85 in. To take your body tape measurements you will need a flexible tape measure that you can wrap around your body parts or if you want to go old school you can wrap a string and then measure it against a straight rule.

Now stretch your arms out as far as they can reach. The exact length varied according to whose arm was being used and could be from 18 to 22 inches. Probably the most obvious example would be a foot literally being based on the length of someones or everyones or anyones actual foot. 19 cm 75 in. Your arm span is the distance between the middle fingertips on each. Cubit from latin cubitum the elbow a cubit was a measurement based on the forearm from elbow to fingertip.

As students will be reviewing body vocab and numbers vocab this lesson should come after the parts of the body lesson and large numbers up to 150 should have also been taught. Here are a few more. For most people their arm span is about equal to their. From nose to finger tip. Hold one end of the piece. Your arms will be parallel to the ground.

You can find flexible tape measures tapes at tailor shops clothes shops and sporting goods stores. Historically units of measurement are often based on sizes of body parts. Span your arms across longer objects and count how many times you can span the object with your arms. English possesses several measurement words that derive from body parts. Using your body to estimate length your hand. In this lesson students will use practice measuring parts of their bodies using rulers or tape measures.

How to measure things using your own body as a ruler step 1. It probably goes without saying that the unit foot was based on the length of a mans foot. Hand width from outspread thumb to little finger. First we examine your arm span to height ratio. 7 cm 2 34 inat middle joint 8 cm 3 inat knuckles hand length. Obviously people vary in size so its best to first measure your own body parts in order to understand how close your own proportions are to these averages.

One inch 25 cm is roughly the measurement from the top knuckle on your thumb to your thumb tip.