Act One: Check out this beach towel! What do you wonder? What would you like to know? Miami artist, Misael Soto (pictured on the left below), created this giant art project to make a statement about people sharing territory at the beach.…
The crack in Antarctica’s Larson C ice shelf has been growing for years. Has the speed of the rift’s growth stayed about the same? increased? decreased? Do the math and discuss the implications. The activity: ice-sheet-rift.pdf
At the amusement park, our friend, Jason, was intrigued with this sign for drink deals. He and his family come often to the park and, during the summer when it is hot, naturally drink a lot. Which is the best…
Bats eat mosquitoes … lots of mosquitoes. Students compare a bat’s weight to how much he can consume in one night. They calculate how much they would need to eat to consume a comparable proportion of food. We compare the…
My dog, Jorge, has just turned 12 years old. He still seems like a puppy to me but I wonder how old he is when compared to a human’s age. He’s definitely not like an 84 year old human (12…
Lots of people enjoy coloring books. Evidently people who like to multitask can find a means of calming their energies and reach a peaceful place by simply coloring designs. Coloring in these drawings allows you to relax and just create pretty…
Celebrate the NBA and NBA Finals by involving your students in interpreting what can be deduced from graphical representations. In this activity students consider scatter plots, circle graphs, bar graphs, Venn Diagrams and the concept of mean. To start the…
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…
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…
The fifth Pirates of the Caribbean movie opened on Friday, May 26th. Your students might be looking forward to seeing this movie and motivated to understand the investment expenses and profit expectations. Our data and questions will help them judge this…
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 for when it is…
Do you recognize what these are? Are you noticing students with these gadgets? Is this a forever toy or just the newest thing? Can you tell by looking at trend charts of Google searches how this phenomena will proceed? Let’s…
This Saturday is the running of the Preakness Stakes Thoroughbred horse race in Baltimore, Maryland. The Preakness is the second major race for 3-year old thoroughbreds to run in their effort to claim the Triple Crown of horse racing. Always…
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…
What does this gizmo do? We’ve given students a diagram of what the interior of this mechanism contains and asked them to try to decide what its purpose must be. Then we’ve given them the data that was collected from…
