1. Scale Drawings
Ask students where scale drawings are used…careers, at home?

2. An architect or designer must put their ideas on paper for someone else to build. The measurements must be accurate for the idea to become a reality. Discuss what could go wrong if the plans were not accurate (tub not able to fit into bathroom, etc).

3. What do you think this is?

4. Appeal to the girls with fashion design and guys with cars, aircraft, etc.

5. Scientific drawings need to be accurate for us to learn properly
Scientific drawings need to be accurate for us to learn properly. Model trains are made in different scales.

6. Discuss use of map scales
Discuss use of map scales. Let students estimate what is 1000 miles away from Birmingham. How far is Los Angeles?

7. Notice the scales are much smaller here
Notice the scales are much smaller here. Can’t use one map’s scale for another map. Each map has its own scale.

8. Is this drawn to scale? Size of planets is probably close to scale, but distances between planets is not.

9. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift is a fantastic tale of the voyages of Lemuel Gulliver, a ship’s surgeon who is shipwrecked. When he washes up on the beach, the residents of Lilliput become very alarmed by this giant because they are only 6 inches tall.
Scale is also important in movie making. The recent movie Gulliver’s Travels is based on a classic book.

10. When making the movie, the director paid quite a lot of attention to scale. This video ( tells about the making of the movie. I didn’t use it during the lesson because it lasts 9 minutes, and much of it is not related to scale.

11. I read passage 1 from Gulliver’s Travels to set the stage for the activity.

12. Once the Lilliputians realized that Gulliver would not hurt them, he lived among them for a while. The books has many descriptions that could launch math problems such as how they fed him and measured him to make clothing. In making the movie, the producers had to pay close attention to scale so that items that were full-sized for the Lilliputians appeared tiny compared to Gulliver.
I read passage 2 along with this slide.

13. How Little Were the Lilliputians?
Conversion Ratio
Lilliputians’ Height (6 in)
Average Group Height (in)
Carefully measure the height of each group member and enter it on the table.
Convert your height to a fraction and decimal ratio.
Find the mean decimal ratio for your group.
We are going to find out exactly how big the Lilliputians were. You will be working in groups of 4 (3 or 5 would also be okay). Each group needs pencils, calculators, one handout, two measuring tapes, and a ruler.

14. The Land of Brobdingnag
Trees were so lofty I could make no computation of their altitude.
Grass was above twenty foot high.
Stile was impossible for me to climb because every step was six foot high.
A man appeared as tall as an ordinary spire steeple, and took about ten yards at every stride.
Picture is of a stile. After Gulliver left Lilliput, he made another journey and landed on an island of giants. Use the scale on the second handout to find the height and other measurements of the giant. The initial measurements will be in inches, but they will probably be more meaningful in feet. This is good practice in converting measurements. This activity needs to be done individually or with a partner.