National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network

This activity develops a K–12 student’s skills in measurement by using a pool noodle to measure objects. The activity encourages students to consider features that are useful when developing or using a measurement tool. This lesson introduces scale by demonstrating scales as factors of ten. This facilitates the introduction and reinforcement of the metric scale and paves the way to the discussion of lengths that are smaller than what can be seen with the naked eye. The lesson also introduces the concept of using different tools to address different length scales.