I used to find converting metric measures really dull but then I realised not only its importance in real life use of Maths but also how we as humans are fascinated by measures. We are always interested in the fastest, oldest, heaviest etc. Many people spend their lives trying to break records. So why are we fascinated by these forms of measure? Possibly because we love to hear about almost impossible feats. We like to know what the extremes are in everything we measure so we can understand where our own measurement fall.
When I ran a Maths club we spent one term trying to draw an outline of the accurate sizes of the worlds largest foot, person, hand etc so we could compare our own with them.
Today I looked through the Guinness World of Records book with my daughter and I had to explain some of the measurements using objects she could see or touch in person. I made this for use with year 7 or 8 when we return to school.
MathsHKO 