Is the corn as high as an elephant's eye?

Do you know this song?

Oh what a beautiful morning, Oh what a beautiful day
I've got a beautiful feeling. Everything's going my way.

There's a bright golden haze on the meadow.
There's a bright golden haze on the meadow.
The corn is as high as an elephant's eye,
And it looks like it's climbing clear up to the sky.

If we look at this song as scientists, we might ask, "is corn as high as an elephant's eye"? To answer this question we need a tool.

Elementary school is a time for learning to use power tools.
Tools let us do things we couldn't do without them.
Reading is one such tool. Measuring is another.
You will use a measuring tape marked in feet.
A foot is the length of a ruler.
It is the same length in Nashville as it is in Boston
It is the same length in New Orleans as it is in Australia.
If I say something is a foot long, everyone in the world knows what I mean.
That is the power of measurement.

Step 1: Measuring the corn
Start measuring where the roots meet the stem. The roots were underground, so they don't add to the height.

Step 2: Meassuring the elephant
This is more difficult. There is an African elephant named Kiba at the Nashville zoo, but when I called the zoo and asked if they could bring their elephant to Park Avenue school so we could compare sizes, they said no. It was too expensive, too difficult and she doesn't like to travel.

This is where the power of measurement comes in. If we have the measurement of the height of his eye, we don't really need the elephant at all.

There are two kinds of elephants, and they are different sizes.

The African Elephant is 11 feet tall
His eye is 10 feet high.
The Asian Elephant is 9 feet tall
His eye is 8 feet high.

picture from Enchanted Learning.com

Use the tapes to compare the height of the corn with the height of the elephants.

We see that our corn is not as high as even an Asian elephant's eye. This is probably because we had very little rain this summer.

This means, of course that we have to rewrite the song.

Oh What a Beautiful Morning (Revised)
There's a bright golden haze on the meadow.
There's a bright golden haze on the meadow.
The corn's not as high as an elephant's eye,
And that is because it is so very dry.

Oh what a beautiful morning, Oh what a beautiful day
I've got a beautiful feeling. Everything's going my way.

One final question: If the zoo had been able to send its African elephant, would she have fit in the classroom door?

Measurement...It's important because you can't always get an elephant.

Follow the links
For more information about the elephant at the Nashville Zoo.

To find out about the elephants at the Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald. This site has heights for all of their elephants, which could be used to make a bar chart.

To find out more about corn.

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