Well Meter and rhytmn are kind of the same. Let me give you a quick run-over of meter/feet.
an iamb is unstressed-stressed. Such as: the way.
Way is stressed more, you can hear it if you say it out loud.
a trochee, is stressed-unstressed. Ex. Way the.
an anapest is a metrical foot consisting of, unstressed-unstressed-stressed. Ex. but between...
a dactyl is the reverse of an anapest so: Breaking the...
It's based upon syllables, so for instance: A word like, Between would be an entire iambic foot, a word like, Jubilee would be an entire anapest foot since it's last syllable is stressed, albeit jub is secondary stress, a word like imperturbable is also an anapest.
Now onto length, this is easy.
Think prefix:
Monometer
Dimeter
Trimeter
Tetrameter
Pentameter
Hexameter
and so on and so forth, I used to know the rest, but I'd have to check some poetry books I have about.
Then there are other meters that are four syllables long, like major ionics, and minor ionics.
Like: I believe major ionics is a spondee (two stressed) followed by a pyhrric (two unstressed) and the reverse is true for the other.
So, Break into the...major ionic, minor ionic: the machine broke.
Just try reading poetry out loud, you will hear the scansion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scansion
Check that out if you want.