Universal Measuring Boxes

Since the old days of Japan, there were many ingenious convenient tools that applied mathematical ideas such as the right-angled scale (kanejaku), and the measuring box (masu). The kanejaku is a right-angled scale that was used to find the center and diameter of a circle (Fig. 13.1.1 (a)).On the other hand, the masu is a simple wooden box with no markings whose volume is, in this example, 6 dL. Using this box we can measure 1 dL, 2 dL, 3 dL, and so on in units of 1 dL up to 6 dL [1, 4].