A. Rulers

Explore the Lesson

When you made a list of distance measuring instruments, there is a good chance you included a ruler, metre stick, or tape measure. All three of these are very similar. In this lesson, you will focus on measuring using a ruler, but the skills acquired will be helpful when using metre sticks and tape measures too.

A. Rulers

A common style of ruler shows 15 centimetres on one side and 6 inches on the other.

Metric Rulers

The centimetre side of this ruler shows 10 lines per centimetre, which means the lines are or 0.1 cm apart. You can also interpret this ruler as having lines that are 1 mm apart since 1 mm = 0.1 cm. To measure an object using the ruler, line up one end of the object with the 0 mark and read the length at the other end of the object.