ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Surveyor's wheel

A surveyor's wheel is a tool that people use to measure distances. It looks like a small cart with a wheel attached to it. When someone rolls the wheel along the ground, it turns and counts the number of times it spins.

The number of spins the wheel makes tells us how far we have traveled. But wait, there's more! Before we start rolling the wheel, we must first tell it how long it is. We do this by using a long tape measure and measuring the circumference of the wheel.

The wheel is like a giant clock face that spins around, and we measure how far it goes based on how many hours it has traveled. For example, if we know the wheel is 1 meter around, and it spins around 10 times, we know we've traveled 10 meters.

So, in summary, a surveyor's wheel is a tool that helps us measure distances by rolling a wheel along the ground and counting how many spins it makes. But before we can use it, we must first know how big the wheel is by measuring its circumference with a tape measure.
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