Question

Why could 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

Elastic tapes are stretchable. So, the length of an elastic measuring tape can be changed each time during measurement due to stretching. Thus, it will not give correct measurement of a distance. Therefore, we cannot use an elastic measuring tape to measure distance.

Some problems which come across while taking measurements using an elastic tape:
1. While measuring a distance, we need to tell someone how much tape has been stretched which is difficult to measure. It leads to incorrect measurements.
2. We cannot measure manually how much the tape has been stretched.
3. 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.