Measurements - Height, Length, Width and Depth

When you measure the volume of an object, again let’s look at a room, you are measuring three areas such as the length of the room, the width of the room and the height of the room. The answer you will get with this type of measurement is the “cubic foot” of the room.

Height: To find the height of any given object, you need to locate the lowest or bottom part of the object and then find the top of the object. Think of height as measuring how “tall” something is.

Length: To find the length of any given object, you need to locate its longest side. Think of length in terms of distance. How far is it from point “A” to point “B”?

Width: To find the width of any given object, you need to locate how wide. Think of looking at a river from one side (bank) to the opposite side (bank). You would measure from bank to bank to get its width.

Depth: To find the depth of any given object, you need to locate how deep it goes. Think of looking into a well and seeing the water below. The measurement from the top of the well to the top of the water level would be the depth of how far down the water is located.

We can measure height, length, width and depth in inches, feet and yards. Let’s say you are 66 inches tall. If you are 66 inches tall, how many feet tall are you? As there are 12 inches in one foot we need to divide 66 inches by 12 or 66 ÷ 12 = 5 feet with a remainder of 6 or 5 feet 6 inches tall.

Now let’s look at width. If a street is 0 inches on one side and 196 inches on the opposite side, how wide is the street in terms of yards? We know one foot equal 12 inches and one yard equals 36 inches so we can now divide 196 by 36 or 196 ÷ 36 = 5 yards with a remainder of 16 inches. There are 12 inches in one foot so we can convert the 16 inches into 1 foot 4 inches. Therefore the width of the street would be 5 yards 1 foot and 4 inches.

Both of these examples require measuring only one object. When you measure two objects the measurement is multiplied to get a square foot. For example, let’s look at a room that is 12 feet long and 10 feet wide. We multiply the length by the width or 12 x 10 = 120. This would mean that the room area is 120 square feet. This would be good to know if you wanted to buy carpet for the room as carpet is sold in square foot sections.