Today we had a request from Meghan Byrne, a 6th grade science teacher in the San Francisco Unified School District. She was doing a lesson with her students on size and scale and she was interested in using the following picture from this blog of the elephant seal measuring device – and letting students determine its length.

So I thought that would be a good exercise to include here for school students. Ecoguardian Mara has provided the following photos of the boat ramp rail so you can now calculate the length of the small elephant seal. 

Be sure to calculate the length of the Elephant seal in both centimeters and in inches.  Then you can also convert it to Metres and Feet . 

Mara sent another picture of a larger male, the brackets on the rail can just be made out so calculate his size.