Meter stick trees

Very few people realize that meter sticks grow on trees. In Lab 00, the students first worked with scientific meter sticks, determining a one meter span from the tip of their middle finger to the other side of their body. Then the class left the meter sticks behind in the classroom and headed off into the meter stick forest where the meter stick trees grow. Hedges sizes up a stick while Edmund looks on.

Rihp cross-checks the accuracy of his newly minted meter stick. Rihp is demonstrating the horizontal measurement learned in class. This field exercise reinforces for the students the location on their body of one meter directly after learning this location.

Jeanine uses a saw to craft a meter stick that will prove accurate to within 1%.

Behind Jeanine is a whole grove of meter stick trees. Although technically considered an invasive species, the trees are an important source of firewood for local families, and, for the physical science class, meter sticks.

The class then brought their meter sticks back to the classroom and checked their accuracy. Some meter sticks were accurate to within millimeters of a meter, others were no more than a centimeter off. One was two centimeters off of a meter. This level of accuracy is quite sufficient for basic measurements of large objects in whole numbers of meters. The students then measured the length, width, and height of the classroom. The measurements were used to calculate the surface area in square meters and volume of the classroom in cubic meters.

The homework for the laboratory was to bring a one kilogram rock to class on Wednesday.