Hello! In this video we're looking at the difference between 'on' and 'in' - between
'There's a glass on the table' and 'The table is in the room.' Hope you find it useful!
We're looking at the difference between 'on' and 'in', and Caroline has done me a picture
of our two cats. Here's the first picture, cat number one, and cat number two.
Now the one on the left is Ruby - what can we say about Ruby? I'll just write it here
- 'Ruby is on the table'. She likes to sit on the table. And the other one is Mabel - where's
Mabel? 'Mabel is in the box'. Strange cat. 'One the table', 'in the box.'
Now here's another drawing. This time it's a cupboard, and a hat, and what can we say
about this? We can say, 'the hat is in the cupboard', 'the hat is in the cupboard', or
we can also say, 'it's on the shelf', 'it's on the shelf.'
So there's a difference there between in and on; what is that difference? I'm going to
show you the difference with two drawings. First of all, a simple drawing, here it is,
of a flat surface with two measurements, length and width. That's got two measurements only.
Now look at this drawing, which I'm just drawing in now, this has got one, two, three measurements.
So the one on the left, I can write 'two dimensions', and the one on the right I can write 'three
dimensions', because it's got three measurements.
Now you can guess what's coming next - I'm going to write on the left hand one - I'm
writing 'on', and on the right hand one I'm writing 'in'. Because that's the difference
- if it's about a two dimensional surface we use 'on', and when it's three dimensional
like a box or a container of some sort, we use 'in'.
Now I've got Caroline to do me four little drawings here, very quickly, of a hill, a
forest, and two chairs. Now first of all, this is not so much about the dimensions as
how we think of them. So the first one, 'he is on the hill', because he's on the top of
it. He's on the hill. But the forest - we feel rather differently about the forest.
He is 'in the forest' because the trees are all around him. Now again the chair - if it's
that kind of chair without arms, then we feel in some sense that he is 'on a chair', but
if the chair has got arms, we're going to feel differently about it - we're going to
say he is 'in an armchair.'
So it's partly about the dimension, and partly about how you feel about the dimensions.