Giant hornets have now migrated to North America. In this activity students take the hornet’s measurements in millimeters and try to draw the hornet, life-sized, on centimeter graph paper. They learn a little more about the new beast.
Two activities to help celebrate National Donut Day
How many donuts is that = huge box of donuts to approximate.
How have donuts changed = torus volume measurements, formula intuition, and algebraic transformation of one formula into a second formula.
This World Record Snickers Bar was created in late January at the Waco, Texas Mars Wrigley Plant. What proportions would be an accurate cross sections of this monster bar? How many Mars Wrigley workers would this feed? How are your calculations different from what was published? How must their calculations have differed from yours?
Brian and his son were doing some shopping when he found this shoe. Egad! Could that be someone’s real shoe? In this activity student need to use a shoe size chart, patterns or linear modeling to try to figure out…
As we get ready for next week’s holiday, students can study a map of the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, describe, measure and hypothesize why this route was chosen and then calculate how long each band will be marching…
How many games are played in each round of the World Cup? In the opening round each of the four teams in a group must play each other (round robin format). From then on each round is a knock-out round…
The NBA court has a 3-point line that separates how many points a player will earn for his team by making a basket from outside of that line. Here’s a simplistic picture of 1/2 of an NBA full court. Teams…
Wow! This snickers bar is huge! Act 1 – Big question = How many times bigger than a regular Snickers bar is this? What info would you like to know? How are you going to judge how much bigger this is…
Where will the eclipse be seen? What if you are not in the path of totality? Total solar eclipse? What is apparent size? How can the moon seem to cover the sun completely? We’ve created a pretty extensive investigation about…
Listen to students initial thoughts as they wrestle through what “bigger” means … length? height? wheel-base? volume?
Over the past Easter weekend this giant iceberg drifted passed Ferryland, Newfoundland. Its hard to tell how large it actually is but it looks huge. Use some of the data that was supplied and your estimation skills to gauge the…
Each year the Boston Ballet highlights the holiday season with the Nutcracker ballet. In 2014, the Boston Ritz Carlton Hotel’s chef, Andrew Yeo and his pastry team, created a gorgeous and massive Nutcracker cake of macaroons and fondant to celebrate the…
A little ratio art might be a fun way to get ready for the upcoming Memorial Day holiday. In this activity students measure; create whole number ratios for the official U.S. flag; decide how our artistic flags will be different…
People spend lots of time staring at their screens (glowing rectangles). Kids spend hours each day using their cell phones, computers, tablets, television and more. Use that interest to motivate your student’s analysis of screen ratios and what proportions they…
Act One: Take a look at the picture. What is the first question that comes to mind? How many donuts is that? What information would be useful? Act Two: See pictures below. Your students can view all of the pictures…