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andrewb Its a quarter of an inch! For all the weirdness, imperial measurements are much easier to visualise. The metric system is so arbitrary.
Dave The applet should describe the size in terms of how bulky the MP3 player will look in my pants pocket.
Leila I have a ruler!! this is why PDFs are so great. you can get a PDF of a ruler and print it out. Or you can use google in find "6.5 mm in in" or "6.5 mm in cm".. or you can use it to find other objects you are familiar with like coins.. for example 6.5 mm is slightly more than 3 nickel widths, or slightly less than the radius of a dime.
Eugene Lee I personally think you should just learn the metric system :)
Eric The problem here is that I don't really know how big a quarter inch is either. I mean, of course I know in the ~abstract~, but that's not what I want. Printing out a PDF is clever, but sorta defeats the "no new tangible objects" idea.
Eric what is the "no new tangible objects" ideas? i think you have to relate the measurement to something you do know.. like your finger etc (check, one of your fingernails will be 1cm or 2cm then you will always have a cm with you :)). esp for when you don't have a computer with you
Leila hmm why did i type eric for my name??
Rachel That's funny...I taught this unit to my third graders :-)
Eric You taught a unit on Silverlight programming? That's fantastic!
Leila yeah I was going to mention this is the sort of thing we try to teach as well.. students seem very resistive to it though, until they've had practice. maybe if they had learned it in third grade from you!