Why YSK: If you’re an American (or Liberian/Myanma), simply knowing that 1m~=3.28ft is… not that helpful. Understanding a unit requires lived experience, after all
Well, if you play Minecraft: good news! Blocks in Minecraft are exactly 1m3. If you can close your eyes and visualize a Minecraft grid, you’re probably already surprisingly good at measuring things in meters.
Let’s give it a shot:
- How tall is the average person? A little bit less than
2 blocks2 meters - How wide is the average person? About
1/2 a block1/2 a meter - What’s the furthest a young person can fall before it starts getting painful? Just over
3 blocks3 meters - How big is the average room? About
6x6 blocks6x6 meters
Some players might even be familiar with kilometers if they use waypoint mods, such as Xaero’s Minimap. If a map marker says it’s 1000 blocks away, that’s 1km. How long does it take a healthy person to walk 1000 blocks 1 kilometer? About 10 minutes!
Honestly these are the sort of shortcuts a teacher should embrace. Personally i just had the idea of flooding public schools with metric rulers but this is even better