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What is it?
This is a beautifully designed and presented history of metric and imperial measurements. Students are shown the history of inches, feet and yards, including some royal interference that I was not aware of. Later on in the PowerPoint we are introduced to metric and imperial conversions, which provides opportunities to recap work on ratio, decimals and general arithmetic. My favourite part is the final slide, which explains:

8 furlongs made a mile,
40 poles made a furlong,
100 links made a chain,
10 chains made a furlong.
6 feet made a fathom,
100 fathoms made a cable

Thank God we went metric!

How can it be used?
Whilst the formal requirement for students to know the full set of metric and imperial conversion rates no longer exists at GCSE, that does not make such a wonderful resource redundant. I am a great believer in showing kids the history of our wonderful subject, and its applications and relevance to the world they live in. Here is a rare example of where we do not have to show-hour in some faux real-life context. We can show students how things used to be, and throughout this journey they can do a fair amount of maths along the way.

Thanks so much for sharing
Craig Barton

Download: Measurement – Metric and Imperial
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