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STANDARDS
CCSS: 6.EE.A.1, 8.EE.A.4
TEKS: 6.7A, 8.2C
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Measure Me!
Gorillas check out the giant ruler used to measure their height.
Each August, the London Zoo’s staff tracks down all its creatures and holds a big weigh-in. Zookeepers measure hundreds of animals—from the large silverback gorilla to the small squirrel monkey—and share their weights and heights with researchers all over the world.
Measuring the critters isn’t easy. For example, to weigh penguins, keepers put out a scale that the birds step on while they walk to breakfast.
It’s important to get these numbers right. According to the zoo’s manager, Mark Habben, “It helps us to ensure that every animal we look after is healthy, eating well, and growing at the rate it should.”
A keeper measures a giant tortoise.
The lightest zoo resident is a leaf-cutter ant at 5 micrograms. The heaviest is a giraffe weighing 1,000 kilograms. About how many times heavier is the giraffe than the ant? Express your answer in scientific notation. (Hint: 1 gram = 1,000,000 micrograms.) Record your work and answer on our Numbers in the News answer sheet.
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