Updated for 2021! Tuesday, September 22, 2021 at 19:21 UTC (which is the same as 3:21 am EST), will be the Autumnal Equinox. It is the time of year when the imaginary plane that passes through the Earth’s Equator would also…
Fall Equinox 2021
Tag: 6th
Death Valley, CA – How hot was it?
Take a guess at what the Fahrenheit reading on this sign must have been.
How did you make that guess?
Use the Fahrenheit conversion formula to calculate the missing number.
Monarch’s are flying south again
In mid-August and early September, the Monarch butterflies begin their annual migration south to more moderate climates to hibernate and overwinter. It is an incredibly long migration and fascinating to observe. But, the population data on the Monarchs has seriously…
Labor Day 2021
What is this holiday about? Are we celebrating the start of school? New cars? The end of summer? Students look for patterns in the history of Labor Day dates. They then use those observed patterns to predict future dates of the holiday.
Just ONE hot dog
A newly released nutritional and environmentally sustainable study shows that eating just one hot dog can take 36 minutes off your total healthy lifespan. How many would you have to eat to lose a whole year of your lifetime? How much did Joey Chestnut loose in the 10 minutes of Nathan’s annual contest?
Back to school activities
Who’s going back to school? – Students calculate the historical changes in U.S. population percentages of people who are going back to school and try to formulate reasons for these variations. 6.EE, 6.RP.3, 6.SP, 7.EE, 7.RP.3, 7.SP Does it pay to get…
That’s a big tomato!
These Aussi tomatoes (the tomato on the left of all of the tomatoes) are huge. How much do you guess one weighs? Can you figure it out?
Let’s learn to gerrymander
In this activity student try to redistrict our pretend state in order to preserve the overall state’s leanings in its new districting plan. Then students redistrict the same state in a way that insures that the minority party will win the next election.
How many athletes brought home no medal?
Probably most of the athletes that went to Tokyo didn’t win a Gold, Silver, or Bronze medal. We couldn’t find any numbers about these people. Can you figure it out from what we could find?
How much will it cost this year to go back to school?
In this activity students work together to decide what equipment or supplies are necessary and how much they might cost. They research actual supply costs and finally decide how long they would have to work at minimum wage to pay for it all.
The new R-naught number
Now we’re plagued with the Delta variant of the coronavirus. What was the original virus’ R-naught number and what has it become?
Need to rent some chaise lounges
Olympic Skateboarding + more
We are very excited to see skateboarding as an event in the Tokyo Olympics. Skateboarding is athletic, artistic and difficult to master. Why has it taken so long to become an Olympic sport? What events will you be able to…
Beautiful mathematics
Ranked Choice Voting in NYC
New York City is still tallying its election results for a new Mayor. This year they tried Ranked Choice Voting. What does that mean? How does that work? What are the ramifications of this sort of voting? Do you think that this will be a fairer and more positive way of electing a Mayor? Students experiment with the technique of tallying the votes using our flow chart and make some observations and decisions about the process.