Class Activities

Pumpkin Time Bomb – Data Collection

by Jon Orr

I was watching Jimmy Fallon on the Tonight Show last week and saw this…

After wanting to try it myself (I did on the weekend with my kids – messy) I had a “wonder question.” I wondered would it be possible to predict accurately the number of bands to destroy any pumpkin?

After a few tweets:

 

I decided to gather some data…..maybe other math teachers out there would blow up a pumpkin and send me the data. I put together a form/activity for people to fill out. See the form below.

So….when the data files in I will send out a spreadsheet so teachers can analyze the data with their class. Hopefully we will see some relationships….and be able to predict how many rubber bands to blow up pumpkins next Halloween!

Here are some videos so far….

 

Please contribute to the data

Fill out the form

Results

Kyle Pearce (@mathletepearce) has written on his blog about this activity. Check it out!

Here is the open spreadsheet with all entries so far

Here is a desmos file showing some relationships (or non-relationships)

This is my class and our result —- 407 bands

 

Using the Internet to create Proportion Problems

by Jon Orr

We used this image today to create our own proportion problems. Shown here is how much data is generated at each company after 1 minute. I took the screen shot from this site

Here was my example of a proportion problem: “If there are 48818 apps downloaded in a minute from Apple, how many in one day?”

My students then designed their own problems to solve……..we then wrote them on the board and everyone picked some to solve….here are a couple:

My kids were engaged and wanted to solve each others problems ……just to see how crazy the data was. We then voted on which piece of data was the most shocking! That gave us a purpose for the practice!!! The consensus was how many Netflix hours were watched each minute!!!!

My first Lesson with Pear Deck

by Jon Orr

PearDeck

Today we gave PearDeck a try. It was awesome….. so far here are the best features:

  1. When I asked students to: “Place a moveable dot on the point where the function gives a value of 40”. On their own screen they see just their dot, but on the projector screen they see everyone’s. — on this particular example the class was split on the two points where the volume is 40. This was awesome because we could all see that there are two solutions. I then asked “Now place a dot where the function gives a value greater than 40” Again they could see in live time everyone’s responses……but it was great for explaining that there are infinite solutions to that question (Our lesson goals were to solve inequalities using graphs)!!!
  2. It worked on all devices!!! It worked on their phones, iPads, tablets and computers…..this was great. I didn’t need to book a lab or for everyone to have an iPad with a specific app! It’s web/cloud based so they just need to access a webpage.
  3. Works with Google Drive….load files right from the Drive….it also saves to the drive. When kids join the class they are asked to sign into their google drive account. So on the dashboard I can see their name!

Some Feedback

Noticed that I had to switch between projector view and dashboard view so that we could see the entire class’s responses to the drawing questions. It would have been nice to see their drawings overlapped just like when you place a dot!
[update: there is a check box that allows the overlay of drawings!!]
More to come. Totally worth the subscription fee though!!

Modelling in Clash of Clans

by Jon Orr

Here is a task I’ve been playing around with lately. Let me know what you think!!!!
Thinking of using this task with my grade 11s functions class/ or more advanced functions classes. I have recently been playing Clash of Clans and if you have played you know that you have to wait for items to be built/upgraded, etc. The time to wait changes based on the your progress and cost of the item/upgrade. You do have the option to SKIP the upgrade wait time by using gems. What has me wondering is that the amount of gems needed to skip an upgrade. What’s the relationship between upgrade time and gems? Our task is to see what that relationship is.

Act 1 : I’ll show this short video to my students:

I’ll ask for any questions the students had from watching the video and settle on —How many gems would it take to upgrade the town hall? — which will take 2 days.

Get the students to make some guesses…..

Act 2 :

Then get them discussing what other info we will need. I want them to come up with the idea they need more instances of upgrade times vs. gems. I can start to show them some pics…..was thinking of revealing each “point” at a time and getting then to guess!

Clash-of-Clans-Act-2

Here comes the modelling time…….plop these down in Desmos. We’ll start to select a model based on the data we see:

Screen Shot 2014-09-24 at 11.04.31 AMpremade desmos page with some sliders built in for each type of model.

Screen Shot 2014-09-24 at 11.21.16 AM

Have them decide which model they like best for the answer…..use the model to come up with an answer. My guess is that students will assume linear and come up with an answer that is too high (I’ll update later after I use it with students). ……and then we can have the big reveal……

Act 3

Watch the video ….

Or use the image..

IMG_0909

 

Sequel:

Find the cost of upgrading immediately…..how much wait time can you skip with $20?

IMG_0890

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