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.
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…
We’re still learning about the coronavirus and its ability to and tendencies toward infection and spread. Students learn about the R-naught number which is a measure of infectious growth. Real-world mathematics!
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?
How have record marathon runs changed through the years? Will those record times keep being broken? Does the data help you predict?
What’s the big deal with our deficit? Do we actually borrow money to cover our debt? If we do, imagine the interest charges? Help your students (and their families) understand the meaning and repercussions…
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…
You have probably heard about major storms hitting Hawaii and the Carolinas. Now is the season for increased cyclonic activity around the globe. How is it measured? Are storms becoming more intense? Did you know there is a formula for…
In December soccer teams with the strongest world rankings were chosen to play in the once-every-4-years World Cup. The World Cup competition has just begun and will continue through July 15th. The team rankings are calculated in a pretty complex…
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
The volcano, Kilauea, on the Big Island of Hawaii, has been active and erupting since 2008. There are two lava flows at present and one is now approaching homes on the Big Island. This is another example of natural events…
World Cup ranking – Students explore the ranking formulated from each team’s previous 4 years of play in their geographical divisions. The formula is complex and weighted. Is it fair? 5.OA, 5.NBT, 5.NF.B, 6.NS.B, 6.EE, 6.SP, 7.EE, 8.F, 8.SP, HSA World…
Students ponder the relationship between place latitudes and average January temperatures while they try to discover a correlation. Is this a linear or near linear relationship? … averaging, missing data for averaging, line of best fit, Google Earth, world locations,…
