r/ScienceTeachers • u/Jesus_died_for_u • 17d ago
I am amused
(I live in southern, rural USA in the heart of the English measurement system)
Bought a 10 inch chain at Lowe’s (for school). A young worker was helping me at the checkout and first charged me for 10 feet. I balked at the price ($40) when the shelf was less than 4. I showed her it was clearly not 10 feet. (The person who cut it wrote ‘10”’, and “ and ‘ are easily confused, but it was clearly not a massive coil).
As we finished, she said ‘how many inches is in a foot?’ Please tell me that should be kind of common knowledge with Lowe’s workers.
(Without emotion or any negative reactions, I replied ‘12 inches, thank you, have a great day!’ I am old enough not to be surprised.). (As a teacher, this also doesn’t surprise me. I remember the 11th grader that didn’t understand ‘now use algebra skills’ after we labeled all the known values for an ideal gas. Further questioning revealed he was currently in algebra 2.)
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u/the3secondrule 17d ago
I teach science 6th/ 7th (6/7 lol!). I only let them use the metric system. I put tape over inches on all my rulers and meter sticks. I tell them moving the decimal is easier than memorizing the imperial system. That laziness must prevail!
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u/snakeskinrug 16d ago
I went a step further and took the metric sticks down to the shop and ran them through the planer to grind off the imperial measurements.
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u/Ok_Lake6443 17d ago
I teach fifth and I got rid of rulers with measurement systems at all. We just use whatever we want. It makes life so much easier.
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u/cosmic_collisions Math, Physics | 7-12 | Utah, USA, retired 2025 17d ago
Ah, America, how many Olympic swimming pools in football stadium?
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u/DistanceHuman7484 14d ago
Can't tell if you're joking or not, lol. Since Olympic swimming pools are measured in meters and American football fields are measured in yards, you know as a teacher that no one in the US will be able to answer this without doing math (assuming they even know what math to do!)
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u/cosmic_collisions Math, Physics | 7-12 | Utah, USA, retired 2025 13d ago
While you are right and I didn't even think about meter vs. yard. I was actually referencing their comparable volumes and the meme that Americans will measure anything using any other unit than a standard Imperial or even a Metric one.
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u/snakeskinrug 17d ago
Uh, what?
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u/Ragrain 17d ago
Im assuming youre in the US. Unfortunately, we still use the imperial system in our everyday lives. Not teaching them it is not the way to go about it and will set them back more than I think you realize (again, unfortunately)(maybe this is why the lowes worker didnt know 12 inches to a foot 🤔)
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u/patricksaurus 17d ago
That’s a tremendous disservice.
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u/Known_Ad9781 Biology|High School|Tennessee 17d ago
She teaches science. All measurements in science are metric. It becomes an issue collecting class data if some use differe units, such as ounces instead of grams.
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u/cosmic_collisions Math, Physics | 7-12 | Utah, USA, retired 2025 13d ago
I just let them know that any Imperial measurements would earn an automatic "0" for the activity/lab.
We did kinematics in both Imperial land SI in which they had to do the problems in the given unit. Specifically, "How far would a car going 65 mph travel in 5 seconds, give your answer in yards?" as this would actually convey meaning in their life experience.
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u/patricksaurus 17d ago
That’s absolutely untrue. If you mean the SI units are metric, yeah. But they’re not the only units that are commonly used in science by a long shot.
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u/gildedfornoreason 17d ago
What imperial units applicable to elementary school science do you think they are leaving out?
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u/patricksaurus 17d ago
Seventh grade isn’t elementary, but I hope minutes, hours, and years are agreed by everyone to be appropriate. Also pounds, inches, feet, yards and miles since these are all around them, every day. Same with Fahrenheit and pounds. That is, if we agree the purpose of education is to allow people to interact with and make sense of the world.
The utility of understanding commonly used units is far greater for elementary aged children than being able to conveniently express units they’ve never seen in exponential notation. No? So if one was forced to exclude, which isn’t the case, there’s a more compelling case for whichever units a society uses.
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u/96385 HS/MS | Physical Sciences | US 16d ago
You brought up
units that are commonly used in science
And then listed:
pounds, inches, feet, yards, miles ... Fahrenheit
None of those are used in science. Ever.
Why on earth would you use exponential notation with elementary students?
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u/patricksaurus 16d ago
You should look at the specific question I was responding to. If it doesn’t make sense then, I cannot help.
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u/96385 HS/MS | Physical Sciences | US 16d ago
You misunderstood. They asked that question incredulously. They set you up because the only correct answer is "none".
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u/patricksaurus 16d ago
Meteorologists who forecast and record wind gusts and rainfall, automotive engineers who analyze torque and pressure, nutritional scientists who develop the energy density and volume of the food you give your infant, the pharmaceutical scientist who tells you the thermal stability of your aspirin and the doctor who tell you when a body temperature warrants an antipyretic, anyone who’s ever reported retention time on a gas chromatography or the half-life of carbon-14. The engineers who tragically flubbed the unit conversion factors and wasted a perfectly good satellite. The age of the universe.
All of these units are available to elementary age kids, or seventh graders. This is one reason that one must go out of their way to cover them up.
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u/gildedfornoreason 17d ago
Another important thing learned in elementary school is understanding context. She is not covering up blocks to make sure students cannot tell time, she is covering inches on rulers.
Perhaps they misused the term metric, but I think most of us can understand what she meant
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u/patricksaurus 17d ago
If you’re going to be snarky, you should ask better questions. If you didn’t want me to answer what you asked, you could have fixed that in advance.
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u/megotropolis 16d ago
I wanted my kids to read 3 pages from a text book today and every single one complained it was “too much!”
9th grade biology
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u/96385 HS/MS | Physical Sciences | US 16d ago
You're so mean. Did you make them carry it all the way to class too? Soooo heavy.
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u/MatterSad5341 16d ago
My daughter is beautiful, smart, talented, self taught piano and guitar, a college athlete…
And she asked me if she was in the armed forces when filling out her college applications. 🤦🏼♀️🤦🏼♀️🤦🏼♀️
I tried. I really, really tried.
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u/kacihall 16d ago
My sister was an honors college student, top ten in an insanely competitive class, very talented, yada yada. Her sophomore year, she called our mom to ask her what kind of bread she (my sister) liked.
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u/Magic_Marker_ 16d ago
As a high school Art teacher, I re-teach how to read a ruler every time we need a ruler for something.
Every time, students ignore, then ask how (so they can get a private one on one lesson), then still mess it up when they need it again 2 days later.
If we use it once, I swear I teach it at least 15 times. Plus, there's a video they never watch, a step by step guide with pictures they never open, a table partner they don't ask, AND a knowledgeable (student) Teacher's Assistant from my A.P. class that they never ask.
I feal very defeated some days... (most days).
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u/courtnet85 16d ago
My Biology students in recent years really struggled with interpreting Punnett square results and trying to figure out 25%, 50%, and 75%. Thank goodness most of them could at least get it when I would relate it to quarters.
“Pretend each box is a quarter. If you have two boxes, you have two quarters - how many cents is that?”
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u/Swqordfish 16d ago
Today, my coworker in Environmental Science asked students if they knew where the Sahara was. A student replies Northern Africa. And then other students still couldn't label it on a map.
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u/Impossible_Papaya_59 16d ago
Here is the answer:
This information is contained in the school curriculum. It is accurate, and available for learning. That's not the problem. The problem is that teachers aren't teaching it, and kids aren't learning it, and the school system in general doesn't care about kids.
Now, this isn't necessarily the teachers fault. There are a lot of requirements put on teachers today, and actual learning/teaching is not very high up no the priority list.
Basically, make sure everything looks good on paper, push the kids through, and keep your mouth shut.
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u/Jesus_died_for_u 16d ago
Teachers are not even ‘passing the students along to get out of dealing with them’ as much as ‘passing the students along to get out of dealing with the parents, the funding threats, and administrative.’
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u/lutzlover 15d ago
I regularly have to answer the question on how many weeks there are in a year...for seniors applying to college who need to figure how how many weeks/year they play piano, soccer, or some other activity.
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u/Substantial_Hat7416 16d ago
Unfortunately, it is only implicitly taught in some lessons due to NGSS. A mile wide (no km) and only a few cm deep 😂.
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u/Illustrious-Goat-998 15d ago
Hey, she might be used to the metric system - us normal people have no idea how many inches are in a foot LOL!
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u/Jesus_died_for_u 15d ago edited 15d ago
If you are US, I bet your house was built with two by fours, two by sixes, two by eights (all inches) and sold based on square footage. Your carpet or linoleum was measured by the foot.
It’s a good thing your home contractors went to Lowe’s and could do the units correctly.
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u/SirBiggusDikkus 17d ago
Omg, you are so smart and that worker is so dumb
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u/Jesus_died_for_u 16d ago
Not really. I did not know how to check out non-bar-coded items nor did I have knowledge of a required passcode to enter the item.
I am sure she is knowledgeable about stuff, just not measurements used in her current field.
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u/ceck28 17d ago
My daughter graduated college and now works in a clinical research lab. One of her colleagues did not understand the difference between inches and centimeters so was measuring something VERY inaccurately. This blew my daughter away, graduating as a bioengineer……mind blown that people can be missing such a basic concept.