An important part of a science project is measuring results. There are many things to measure – weight, mass, volume or capacity, speed, pressure, temperature, time, distance – even torque. Thankfully, most projects only measure a few things, and most experiments guides will describe the way to measure.
Metric or English? When doing your project, you will need to know if your teacher wants you to measure using the English system or the metric system.
In The Metric System all units are based on multiples of 10. For example, a meter multiplied by 1000 is a kilometer, or a meter divided by 100 is a centimeter. The metric system is used in most countries except the United States, and by scientist worldwide. The English system is what most people use in America. Gallons, cups, inches and feet are all part of the English system.
What are You Measuring? The next thing you will need to know is what you are measuring. The basic measurements you’ll probably run into with a science project are:
Often you’ll need to convert one set of measurements to another. There are many places online that will help you do this. One table is found at: http://www.bartleby.com. The easiest thing to do, however, is to go to Google, and type in what you want to convert: “convert 1 foot to meters” or “convert 5 hours and 10 minutes to seconds” or whatever you want to convert. Go ahead. Try it. And while you’re at it, type in “24/2007” or another math problem. Sometimes you don’t even need to think!
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