Breaking The Rule**

One item that went in the great May Declutter was a school ruler. I have lots of rulers - they get used in papercrafts, sewing activities - but primarily when I am teaching. Last week I was helping a friend revising 'triangles', and got out two rulers so we could have one each. And we noticed one seemed slightly longer than the other.

So we lined them up together. The red WHSmith 'shatterproof' was not only slightly shorter physically, but the measurements for 12" didn't line up. Neither did the 30 cms match. 
We then found a third ruler, so we could determine which was the wrong ruler. The Learning for Life one was a freebie from the Education Show at the NEC about 10 years ago - so maybe that was the faulty rule. But no, it seems the WHS one is incorrect. I stacked the three up and although my photo below doesn't show it too clearly, the red ruler is 4mm short. That's a 1.3% error! Enough to give a false reading in a maths exam.
Ruth suggested I went and complained to WHS - but I have had it years and it hardly seems worth it. I did wonder about taking it into one of their shops and measuring the ones currently on sale...
I was going to keep it 'for the purpose of drawing straight lines' but Bob wisely pointed out that I do have a plethora of rulers so it might as well go...
So I chucked it.

 ** the title of the post is incorrect, it is shatterproof so I didn't actually manage to break it!