Question

Why can you not use an elastic measuring tape to measure distance? What would be some of the problems you would meet in telling someone about a distance you measured with an elastic tape?

Answer 1

An elastic measuring tape is stretchable. It cannot be used to measure distances because the length of the tape may change on stretching. As a result, the measured length would not be correct.

If you measure the length of an object twice using an elastic tape, then you may get different values of the same length each time. This is because elastic tapes are stretchable.