Measurement Operations Worksheets
This is one of those topics were students just try to bull through and end up getting a little sidetracked from the get-go. It is tremendously important that teachers slowly explain the significance of units of measure in these problems. These are the types of problems where you may see partial credit being given because the math was correct, just not the details. There are just two basic rules that you need to follow here. All your units should be in the same type of units. If you are working with product or quotient operations, the units must be account for along the way. These worksheets and lessons help students learn how to perform a wide array of math operations on values that include units of measure.
Aligned Standard: 4.MD.A.2
- A Power of Ten Step-by-Step Lesson- What happens when you take a measurement and drive it to scale?
- Guided Lesson - Work with units of time and length. The focus is on products, differences, and sums.
- Guided Lesson Explanation - You need to make a slight time conversion on number one as you will see.
- Practice Worksheet - I kind of went two by two on this one.
- Matching Worksheet - Yes, the units give it away in most cases. But, some are quite challenging.
- Answer Keys - These are for all the unlocked materials above.
Homework Sheets
Instead of using the standard word or story form, I choose to set them up as operational problems.
- Homework 1 - Start with the fact that 1 gallon = 8 pt.
- Homework 2 - We subtract measures at two units.
- Homework 3 - This covers many measures including length, liquid, and days.
Practice Worksheets
I realized that I left sums out of this. Probably because they are a bit too simple for this level.
- Practice 1 - Just about every operation you can think up.
- Practice 2 - Find the final value of the following problem.
- Practice 3 - All pretty straight levels of division.
Math Skill Quizzes
Lots of products and differences are in here for you to work with.
- Quiz 1 - Whole values of products and differences between measurement.
- Quiz 2 - Another test of of your skills.
- Quiz 3 - A mixed test of your skills.
What Are Units of Measure?
We use language, in this case English, to communicate our message and share thoughts with others. The purpose of this is to share information in a way that helps the other part understand exactly understand what we are talking about. You can help put a great deal of context on your thoughts when you are referring to quantities and amounts by using units of measure. These measures help us understand an amount quickly and put your thoughts in proper context. For instance, if you asked me how much pizza I ate, I might respond with the answer of, “2”. That gives us no context. Did I eat 2 pieces, 2 pizza pies, or 2 cases of pizza pies? Those measures (pieces, pizza pies, cases) give us a clear understanding of how much I ate.
There are several different measures that are paramount in industry. All products are to, some extent, measured using one or mixture of these measures. The measures are length, time, amount, electric current, temperature, luminous (light) intensity, and mass.
The Metric system is an internationally recognized system of measurement. We use this system very frequently in our daily lives such as for the measurement of flour, oil, water, how heavy an object is, and so on. The metric system has seven most common base units: for length, meter is used. For mass, kilogram, time is denoted by seconds, electrical current is measured in amperes, the base unit for temperature is kelvin, luminous intensity is denoted by candela, and the unit for measuring quantity is mole. The metric system units are a convenient way to understand the different values and their respective units. They help us understand the concept better!
How to Perform Math Operations with Units of Measure
This seems quite complicated when you begin working math in here. I’m sure you were at one asked to amplify or reduce a recipe in your kitchen because it either made too much or too little for your needs. This might have caused a slight panic, but I can assure you that this is not that hard as long as you follow two single steps of how to proceed with these types of problems.
Make Sure You Have Common Units - This is the absolute paramount thing that you need to do. Before you process any operations, make certain that the units of measure in all of your values are the same. For example, if you were asked to find the difference between a 5-foot 7-inch and a 2-meter board, you would need to do some work. Unless the problem specifies which system of measurement is required you could convert them to either measure. The important thing is that they both need to be using the same units in order to calculate their operations.
Units Are Also Multiplied and Divided - When you are processing operations that involve division or multiplication the units are also multiplied or divided. An example is when you are determining square footage and you have a length that is 10 feet and width that is 16 feet. The math appears as 10 feet x 16 feet = 160 feet2. As you can see the feet were multiplied and became feet squared.