Week 1 Activity – Body Measurements

Above is my chart of my body measurements.  As I was completing the measurements, it was interesting to learn where some of these measurement terms were derived from.  For example, I’d heard of fathom and cubit before but didn’t know their origin or their standard lengths.  Google informed me that the length of a fathom and a cubit are 6 feet and 18 inches respectively.  I was surprised to find that my personal measurements were actually very close to the standard measures for quite a few!  My thumb happens to be exactly one inch wide, and my fathom and cubit measurements were just half an inch off from the standard ones.  In modern times, I’m definitely on the shorter end of the height spectrum for males of European descent, but I’d bet 1000 or 2000 years ago I would’ve been right around average, or maybe even on the tall side!

The body measurement I chose to document for this activity was the hand span.  Using imperial units, my hand span is one that conveniently is a nice round number without a fractional component: 9 inches exactly.

This was one of the few measurements on the body measurement chart that was already knew beforehand because I use it when bucking up firewood.

My family heats our house primarily with a wood stove.  We live on a 30-acre rural property/farm and there are enough old alders dying off and conifers that come down in wind storms that I can collect the 5-ish cords of wood required for a year right off our property.  Our woodstove requires 18” lengths of firewood, so I use two of my 9” hand spans to determine where to make cuts along a log.

One hand span.

Two hand spans.

Cut.

Repeat.

After marking off five pieces, I measured with a tape to check my accuracy, and found that I was about one inch too long over the five pieces (91” vs 90”) but considering the kerf of the chainsaw removes about ¼” and there would be 4 cuts I admit I was pretty darn pleased with my accuracy!

Back inside getting warm by the fire, I thought about Plato’s mathematical separation of mind and body.  In his heavenly realm of perfect mathematics there exists an absolutely perfect measurement of 9 (or 18) inches, but certainly none of the firewood I cut today matched that idealized length, and I’m fine with that.  The length of my firewood just needs to be shorter than the firebox of the stove so it will physically fit in there to keep my family warm, and during this cold spell we find ourselves in the middle of at the moment, that's good enough for me.