One of my colleagues was looking for a ruler and as is always the case, nobody had one or could find one. Why is it that there’s never a ruler when you need one? The number of times I end up using the stupidly short ruler on my Swiss Army knife to measure things is ridiculous. I could go out and buy one, but then the Sock Monster would go and steal it and we’d be back at square one.
So my colleague then said “I’ll go and print one out”. A quick Google search and lo and behold, you can download a variety of rulers to print. Genius! You need never be without one again:
Erm, okay, you know where this question comes from: how the hell to do you calibrate the accuracy of it? Surely it is dependent on the printer’s calibration.
Well you see there are different PDFs to print from at different paper sizes (Letter, A4 and so forth). I’d check for you but the only rulers I have to hand are printouts and they’re all the same! 😉
Can you print it out onto plastic, wood or metal? The reason I ask is because when I want a ruler it’s invariably because I want to hit someone with it.
Hmmm, might not fit in the printer. What if you printed it out on some of that thick card several times and glued them together to make them thicker?
This is paper rulers right? I’ve been reading the comments other than mine 🙂
Yep. You print them out, cut them out with scissors and you have a quick ruler! Of course, no substitute for a real one but handy nonetheless if you don’t have one to hand.
Shouldn’t I need thicker paper like butcher paper to print the ruler or something I need this for my homework and I could just use a paper for that
If you want to draw a line then you’ll want to print it out on thicker paper but if you want to measure something then it doesn’t matter what you print it on.
don’t we need to buy a ruler like you can’t get ruler paper for your printer
What if I don’t trust this ruler? I mean…I printed one a few weeks ago and have been hesitant about using it for accuracy purposes. I took it home last night and held it up to a ruler I bought at the store a few months ago and lo and behold; it matched. Problem I’m having is; how do I know the one from the store was accurate. What if this is simply a big ruse to make all my drawings of how to rearrange my garage incorrect (hence; having a cabinet where there should be a tool chest, etc.). Could get expensive if I accidentally park my motorcycle on top of my refrigerator or the likes.
Only way to be absolutely sure is to measure based on the fact that 1 metre is 1,650,763.73 times the distance travelled by ultra voilet radiations emitted by Krypton-86 as described here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1_metre Otherwise you’re just guessing! 😉
Doesn’t matter. So long as you measure your garage and your boxes/motorcycle/refrigerator with the same incorrect ruler it will be fine. As long the the ruler is only incorrect due to scale, not due to non-linearity or non-consecutive markings.
How do you know the ruler is accurate?
First of all, this is a legitimate question. I’ve printed stuff and had it come out the wrong size. (I’ve had a “100 mm” line come out as only 93 mm!!)
Simple. If you’re printing stuff, that means you have paper. American letter-size paper is 8.5 by 11 inches. American legal-size is 8.5 by 14 inches. European A4 paper is 210 by 297 millimeters.
Just use your ruler to measure the size of one sheet of paper. That will tell you how accurate your ruler is. (Your paper size might be off by a very tiny fraction of an inch, but I trust the paper size to be about right more than I trust the ruler to print correctly.)
Well done John! Helping me source some (magically effective) magnetic bracelets for friends with various getting-old pain issues. Many thanks from a fellow John from Atlanta.