Simple and Practical.

Everyone needs to measure things. Perhaps we should measure together with a common system. This system should have a high emphasis on being practical and simple. Maybe the easiest way to get started is with distance. We need a place to start for measuring length. What about this?

This ruler is arbitrary for now. It is some random fixed width for the moment with several equally spaced lines. We need to name our ruler so it is not confused with anything else. Let's use ...

Ok, now we have a name and some set length. We are all set! Let's put it use. For our first experiment we can measure our hand 🖐.

🚨 Well, we have already encountered a problem. Our hand is less than the length of our ruler. Seems we need to divide our ruler into smaller peices.
🤔

Let's see if cutting into smaller pieces fixes this issue. Let's try 100 sections, and since we already started with a classic language let's continue. We chose Greek for our whole measure let us use Latin for our fractional units so we can tell the difference if we are using smaller units or whole units. Do not over think the naming. 100 in Latin is Centum. With a little conjugation we get Centi. Add that with our ruler's name we have Centimeter.

Great! 🎉

We get just over 19 centimeters (or 19cm). But our hand hangs just over one of the number markers. Perhaps we need to divide the ruler event more.

Let's add another 0 and try 1000. Using the same method as before 1000 in Latin is Milli. Adding our ruler name we have Millimeter

That gives us more accuracy. The hand we measured comes to 19.3cm or 193 millimeters (193mm). With this success let's set our sites on something longer like ourselves. Let's measure our height. Ok, now we have a different problem. Our ruler is not large enough so we have to use more than one ruler.

We get 1 ruler (or 1 meter) and 70 centimeters (average height in the U.S.). We can add them together using a decimal form and get 1.7 meters (or 1.7m).

Now I'm getting excited. Mainly because it is so easy to move between the units.

I can do this in my head with little thought. That is what I call simple and practical just like our system for currency.

We should try one last thing. Measuring a great distance. Let's measure how far we are from our favorite restaurant.

Ok I have mine. I'm going to lay the meter sticks end to end until I reach my destination.

Oh wow! It took me 1,100 sticks. What about you?
Well I'm thinking we need a name for large measure, because I'm not saying 1 thousand and 100 meters all the time. How about we use 1000 like we did when dividing our ruler. I know you might be thinking we cannot use Milli or it will cause issues. Well remember what we said earlier? We are using Greek for large measures. Greek for 1000 is Kilo. Now we have a Kilometer or km. My favorite restaurant is 1.1km from my home.

Let me take some liberties and fill out the rest of measure names and add it to a table.

We have one last problem to solve. I have the ruler here at my home. How do I get this ruler to you? I mean I could always mail it, but what happens if it gets damaged, lost, or worse shrinks a little over time.

We need something more reliable to share the exact size of our ruler. It should be something outside of a physical object. So light is very abundant. We can define a meter as the length of the path tavelled by light in a vacuum in

Ok, I'm tired of measuring all that. I think I need a drink. Perhaps we can use what we created to measure our beverage.