After chlorination, it has been hard to measure the quantity of pollutants in pool water. A Canadian chemist, Xing-Fang Li, has found a marker for urine that chlorine doesn’t disguise. In this activity, students calculate volume of several pools, change that…
You have probably heard about the proposed border wall that may go up along the U.S./Mexico border. How much wall needs to be built? How much will that cost? What is that per mile? Per foot? What else could you…
Saturday, April 22nd is Earth Day There is so much to bring to your classroom to support recycling, conserving resources, studying climate change and protecting our planet. McDonald’s moves toward Antibiotic-free chicken – What will the effects be on costs at the restaurant, costs in…
The Iditarod Dog Sled Race begins on Saturday, March 4th in Anchorage, Alaska. This long and grueling competition is called the Last Great Race on Earth. Students do some rate, distance, and hardship comparisons to decide if they agree that the…
Students calculate base area or volume of cakes made from 2 cake pan sizes and observe how the volume of the cake changes with the increased pan size. This is an activity intended to demonstrate that the volume increase is…
On October 16, 1995, perhaps a million black men gathered for the Million Man March on Washington. This was 32 years after Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his historic “I have a dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial to 250,000 civil…
In my family it is traditional to eat latkes (Yiddish for potato pancakes) at this time of year. They are fried in a lot of oil and salted generously. My mom’s latkes were wonderful but they couldn’t have been good for…
Wow! It’s been a long time coming. The Chicago Cubs just won the World Series! The last time they won the World Series was in 1908 (For some perspective, that is the same time the first car, the Model T,…
The winner of the Presidential Popular vote (November 8, 2016) is not always the same as the winner of the Electoral College vote (January 6, 2017). In this activity students ponder how that could happen … with data. electoral-college-compare2016.pdf
Click the map to create your own at 270toWin.com Let your students see how votes really count with our activity on the Electoral College. Can someone win the popular vote in the Presidential election and still not become President of…
We ran into this sale online. Is that advertisement correct? Do they just want us to believe their math and not question what is really 70% off? Is everything or anything really 70% off?
To win in Olympic swimming, contestants have to be incredibly fit and have marvelous endurance and technique. Do they also need to consider the science of their motions and their equipment? Could your swimsuit, swim cap and goggles be holding…
Develop some understanding of the many Olympic sports and their various judging requirements. Should the Olympics only include performances that can be objectively measured?
Pokémon GO is all the rage. News reports show people glued to their smart phones as they travel to nearby landmarks where virtual critters appear and need to be caught by throwing Pokémon Balls with a phone swipe. Well, at least…
