hey welcome back to make build modify i'm justin today let's talk about the fractions of an inch on a tape measure in order for you to really understand why these lines are here and how to use them i want you to think of a tape measure as a stick with lines on it let's start with a blank stick if you need to measure something you can use a stick and mark it then transfer the mark to your work i'm showing you this method to illustrate that lines and numbers on the tape measure are not necessary but they are a lot more convenient this method works well but the stick will soon fill up with lines and make it difficult to read so to solve this problem we add a bunch of equally spaced marks to our stick hoping that our marks will line up to whatever it is we have to measure this way we can reuse them but now we have a new problem how do we remember which line to use one solution would be to number them now we can remember the lines by going to the number let's call these inches what if the thing we're measuring lands between the lines we could add more lines and numbers but that's cluttered and confusing so instead let's start with a mark halfway between the inch marks we can call it half of an inch and refer to it as one half beyond the previous number for example this is one and a half and this is four and a half now we don't need numbers for reading these lines because they're read in the context of the previous inch soon we find we could use even more lines so we cut the space between the lines in half again this makes four equal spaces inside of an inch effectively quartering the inch we can call these one quarter two quarters referred to as half an inch three quarters and the fourth quarter is the next inch every fraction on the tape measure has a preferred written form and always has an odd numerator this may be two quarters but it's written as one half one being odd watch for this pattern as we move on we decide we need more so we carry out the same operation and cut the new spaces in half again this makes eight equal spaces inside of an inch or eighths of an inch 1 8 2 8 or a quarter inch 3 8 4 8 or a half an inch 5 8 6 8 or three quarters and 7 8. the final eighth is the next inch and here are the odds again this is still not enough so we carry out the same operation one more time cutting the new spaces in half again this makes 16 equal spaces or 16 of an inch we can refer to these as 1 16 2 16 or an eighth of an inch 3 sixteenths four sixteenths or a quarter inch five sixteenths six sixteenths or three eighths seven sixteenths eight sixteenths or half an inch nine sixteenths ten sixteenths or five eighths 11 16 12 16 or three quarters 13 16 14 16 or 7 8 15 16 and finally the last 16 is the next inch and as you can see all the numerators are odd so you may be asking how can i tell at a glance if the line is a sixteenth an eighth a quarter or a half the shortest line is a sixteenth the lines the next size up are an eighth the next size up is a quarter and finally the largest is a half an inch and of course the one inch lines go all the way across the tape i hope that all made sense and remember it takes practice to be proficient with a tape measure if you need to buy a tape measure and you want to show some support for this channel i'll have affiliate links in the description and if you think i earned it please subscribe