Students create equations for finding the break-even points of hybrid and electric vehicles by mileage and years of ownership. They work with systems of equations to find the number of years or number of miles where the cost of these cars are the same.
What’s your guess? How fast are the number of daylight hours changing each day? Are the changes dramatic or subtle? Students make guesses; compute how long, on average, the change in daylight hours should be; and finally understand the variability in our year of daylight hours.
Powerball and MegaMillion jackpots are growing all the time. Having a terrible chance of winning nearly a BILLION dollars might be a context that engages your students. Examine compound probability to decide if playing Powerball is worth it. As part…
Here are two very different maps about where Veterans live in the U.S. and which states have the largest density of Veterans citizens. What do these two maps make you wonder or realize? How can you explain their comparison?
Use our current data on Halloween spending in America to engage your students in an analysis of the ratios and percents of population, participation, and money spent in honor of October 31st. This activity takes kids through finding parts of wholes as well as ratio, percents and proportion problems. Beware: the tasks in this activity involve some large numbers as well as some challenging fraction/ratio/proportion problems.
Catching a productive meteor shower can be a stunning experience. On the evenings and mornings of August 11th, 12th and 13th there could be a very good show. A last quarter moon will leave the night sky growing darker each…
When you look at the new case numbers of the Coronavirus in the U.S. and compare that with various world and national events and our present scientific understandings, what do you wonder? What can you deduce? What might the future…
Saturday, June 20th, 2020 Sunrise on summer solstice at Stonehenge On Saturday, June 20th, at 5:44 pm EDT, the Earth’s North Pole will be tilted as far towards the Sun as it will ever be in the year. This marks the…
This Monday Americans will celebrate Memorial Day. Who are we honoring? How did the holiday come about? Isn’t Memorial Day usually on May 30th? Students learn a little about the history of the holiday, analyze the possibilities and patterns for when…
Why would anyone need such a big roll of toilet paper? How does it compare to Charmin’s other toilet paper products? If this roll lasts for one month, how big a roll would I need to be able to last for one year?
Updated! Students look at the past and present populations of the U.S. and the past and present population of school attendees to calculate the percentage of the population that are enrolled in K-12 schools. They are asked to draw conclusions…
This is part II of our reflections on the World Cup games. Part I, World Cup rankings, explained and let students practice with the formula and weighting that is used to establish each country’s team rank. This second activity deals with…
Scoring Ski jumping – The scoring rubric for each of the Olympic events is intended to eliminate the possibility of scoring bias from the judges. Let your students learn more about the scoring of one event and decide whether it seems fair…
On October 24, 2017, the Olympic flame was captured on Mount Olympus, Greece. (Lighting the Olympic Torch). That flame lit one of this year’s Olympic Torches and the Torch relay was begun on its way to the opening Winter Olympic…
With the start of summer and wonderful outdoor activities, it might be good to examine the growth of Lyme disease occurrences in the United States. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has published maps for all of the…