Posts Tagged ‘Math %’
March 19, 2026
This April Fool’s Maths Test has been soooo popular, it deserves a reboot.
Tell your year 8 or 9 students this test is designed to test their ability to concentrate and use logic while doing a challenging test under pressure.
Tell students to circle or note the ‘correct’ answer. Then wait to see how long it takes them to think you have totally lost the plot! You can make copies of the test using the PDF links below or project it onto a Smartboard. You can put the answers up later.
Mathspig April Fools Maths Test 1
Mathspig April Fools Maths Test 2
Mathspig April Fools Maths Test ANSWER
Posted in Funny ha^2 Maths, Middle School, Silly Maths Jokes, The Teacher Goes Bananas, Year 7 mathspig | Tagged April Fool, class, crazy, funny, joke, Math %, Middle school, prank, teacher, test, trick, Try, Year 8 | Leave a Comment »
October 2, 2023
This is the best Middle School Probability outdoor exercise EVER!
Equipment:
1 coin per student.
Instructions:
In the schoolyard, students move back and forward with the flip of a coin. Must be a good flip. This exercise works best with a grid drawn on the schoolyard in chalk, perhaps. (See pic below) If possible film the exercise from above.
Now here are lots of people doing this 2D random Walk on Wall St. The results are totally amazing.
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Watch for the Bell Curve. It’s AWESOME.
This video was made by The National Museum of Mathematics NY.
Check out their Squared wheeled bike here.
Posted in Middle School, probability, Random Numbers, Uncategorized, Year 7 mathspig, Year 9 Mathspig | Tagged activity, Bell Curve, coin, distribution, flip, Fun, Graph, Math %, Middle school, MoMath, normal, Outdoor, probability, random, walk | Leave a Comment »
May 24, 2023
The names Bond, James Bond. In Moonraker with Roger Moore (1979) 007 jumps out of a plane without a parachute to avoid an assassination attempt. He catches up with, Jaws, arch-baddie, in mid-air and takes his parachute. Jaws survives his fall by landing on a big top circus tent.
In Point Break with FBI agent Johnny Utah, Keanu Reeves, leaps from a skydiving plane after Patrick Swayzes’ characer, Bohdi, who has taken the last parachute. Utah catches Bohdi in mid-air, and after a tense confrontation with a gun, both survive using Bodhi’s chute. The remake was in 2015.
There are more movie and real life stories at the Free Fall Maths link.
Note: We’ll assume Bhodi and Utah have equal horizontal velocities (plane exit velocity plus wind) so the following calculations only involve the vertical or falling velocity. The terminal velocities used for Bhodi and Utah are realistic estimates.
Posted in 10 Movie Cliches Debunked with Maths, Hollywood Maths, Simultaneous Equations, units length, units speed | Tagged altitude, Break Point, calculate, Can you catch, challenge, jump, Math %, Moon Raker, movie, simultaneous equation, sky diving, terminal, Time, velocity, without parachute | Leave a Comment »
May 4, 2023
This is the rework of a previous post.
Action heroes such as Indiana Jones or even film kids like Tom Sawyer or The Goonies who go into a cave, anabandoned house, a crypt or a catacomb light the entire place with one match, one candle, a lighter or a cellphone
.
Is this real?
Now mathspigs, if you are interested in a career in stage/film lighting or even architecture you will need this maths.
60Watt light globe tells us how much power it uses. But some 60W globes are brighter than others. Light is measured with weird units.
USA uses Foot-candles. Can you imagine the pickup line ‘You brighten up my world like a footcandle’? A foot-candle is the brightness of a candle 1 foot away. Now think of a bubble around the candle. Brightness is mostly measured using one square foot or one square metre of that bubble:
1 LUMEN = 1 Footcandle/ft squared
1 LUX = 1 footcandle/m squared
Don’t get too hassled by these units. As a rough rule:
1 candle = 1 LUX
From graph you can see by 3m a Birthday Cake is not very bright even in a haunted house or crypt.
Challenge: Draw a graph of the brightness of your own Birthday Cake!
Big Challenge:Draw a graph of your Teacher’s Birthday Cake!!!!!! Ahhhh!!!!
We know:
1 candle = 1 LUX
Now compare the brightness of 1 candle to the brightness of other sources of light:
If you want sufficient light to live your everyday life you’d need:
80 candles just to go to the toilet!!!!!!
Posted in 10 Movie Cliches Debunked with Maths, algebra, Area, Hollywood Maths, Hyperbolas, Inverse Functions, units speed | Tagged birthday cake, brightness, calculate, cave, how do you measure, how many candles do you need, how many light bulbs, light, light bulbs, lighting, Lux, Math %, movie cliche debunked, room, Unit of brightness | Leave a Comment »
May 1, 2023
This is a rework of a previous post with full calcs.
Every volcano disaster movie from Volcano (1997) with Tommy Lee Jones to Dante’s Peak (1997) with Pierce Brosnan someone somewhere tries to out run a lava flow. Is this possible?
The answer is maybe. You will find everything you want to know about lava flows here.
On January 10,1977, at Nyiragongo lava sprang from the sides of the volcano moving at speeds up to 40 miles per hour. About 70 people were killed.
Measuring the temperature of lava. Photograph by R.L. Christiansen, U.S. Geological Survey, January 9, 1973.
The fastest Lava flows recorded were in Hawaiiin 1950 when Mauna Loa erupted. The lava traveled at 6 miles per hour through thick forest. But once the lava flows became established and good channels developed, the lava in the channels was flowing at up to 60 mph.
Speed of average sprinter = 10 – 15 mph
Can you out run a lava flow?
You would be scorched in 33 seconds!!!
Posted in 10 Movie Cliches Debunked with Maths, algebra, graphs, Hollywood Maths, Simultaneous Equations, units speed, Year 12 mathspig, Year 9 Mathspig | Tagged 10 Movie Cliches, algebra, Can you out run a lava flow?, Dante's peak, Fun math, Hollywood Math, lava flow, Math %, Middle school, Movie Math, Nyiragongo, out run a lava flow, real life, Simultaneous equations, speed | Leave a Comment »
February 8, 2023
Summer Holidays are done. School is BACK in Australia. But how do middle school teachers get students excited about Maths? Here are some ideas.
“A growing body of research shows us that outdoor play leads to better physical and mental health, has positive effects on cognitive function and learning, and reduces the incidence of behavioural problems.” Maria Zotti, Nature Play, SA.
Peter Dunstan, Principal Kilkenny PS, SA, writes in SAPPA magazine, Primary Focus, that outdoor play fosters “wonderment, independence and freedom” as well as “social skills, imagination, creativity and problem solving”.
Inspired by SAPPA and NaturePlay, Mathspig has produced her own outdoorsy maths list:
References:
7. Robin Hood Give us your best shot.
9. You can measure the volume of your lungs by blowing one breath into a balloon and pushing it into a full bucket of water. Measure the overflow.
15: Outdoor Maths: Times Tables
21. Light intensity links. Here and here.
25. Sound Volume Measurement
36. Killer heels that really kill.
Posted in 41 maths things to do before you're 12, Junior School, Maths Piglets, Uncategorized | Tagged 12, 41, activities, amazing, challenge, exciting, Fun, funny, great, inspiring, junior school, Math %, Middle school, Outdoor, Problems | Leave a Comment »
September 16, 2022
As the weather improves – Spring in Melbourne, my city & Fall in USA & Autumn in the UK – it is an ideal time to take math outdoors. Here are some fab exercises for Middle School Math.
Lego Man soccer fields will vary in size depending on the height of each player picked by each student. This does your head in. It is really challenging maths!
McGill Uni link here.
Don’t forget to throw in Mathspig’s lame protractor jokes.
You’ll find full calculations at the Maths is Fun blog.
You’ll find more fab outdoor junior and middle school maths activities at the terrific Maths and Movement blog.
Some students will discover their co-ordinate point is not on the grid. Students should then work out that they will need a different scale for the y-axis. You can get more inspiration at the Stand Again blog.
Posted in 6 Outdoor Maths Adventures: Middle School, co - ordinates, decimals, direct proportion, geometry, graphs, Linear Equation, Middle School, Parabolas, trigonometry, Year 9 Mathspig | Tagged Adventure, Co-orinate geometry, linear graph, Math %, Middle school, Outdoor, protractor, ratio, similar triangles, Soccer, tree height, trigonometry, World Cup | Leave a Comment »
April 19, 2022
………………………………………………
The following maths is suitable for Year 9+
but can be presented to lower grades just to show
maths is cool!
Posted in Football Maths: The longest kick!, geometry, Middle School, Senior School, Sport Maths, trigonometry, Year 12 mathspig, Year 9 Mathspig | Tagged angle, Aussie Rules, best angle, calculate, football, how to, Longest kick, Math %, pythagoras, Rugby, Soccer, trigonometry, USA, vectors, velocity | Leave a Comment »
November 26, 2021
Death by Caffeine: The Maths Part 1 METRIC here
The lethal dose for caffeine is about 68 milligrams per lb of body weight. Average consumption of caffeine is about 200 milligrams a day. The Mayo Clinic advises against exceeding 500 to 600 milligrams per day.
This work titled Timing is Everything is by street artist ABOVE in London.
You may want this much energy but be warned, energy drinks can kill.
It would take a ridiculously huge number of ANGRY WOMBAT energy drinks to kill a 14 year old weighing, say, 110 lb. Nevertheless, some kids are more sensitive to caffeine than others and then much lower levels of consumption of energy drinks can be fatal.
See Death by Caffeine: The Math Part 2 USA UNITS
Here is the work (see below) TIMING IS EVERYTHING by street artist ABOVE in London showing the timing.
Posted in algebra, Caffeine Math, graphs, Linear Equation, Middle School, units weight, Year 7 mathspig, Year 9 Mathspig | Tagged caffeine, calculate your, dose, energy drinks, fatal, kill, linear equation, linear graph, Math %, Middle school, overdose, poisoning, project, student | 1 Comment »
November 18, 2021
Death by Caffeine: The Math Part 2 Metric Units HERE.
Caffeine content sources Caffeine Content Data Base
On April 12 2017 16-year-old Davis Cripe collapsed at school in South Carolina and died later in hospital. In the span of two hours, Davis drank a cafe latte from McDonald’s and a large Mountain Dew, then “chugged” a 16-ounce energy drink when he got back to art class.
Here, assuming Davis drank large sized drinks, is the lethal caffeine consumption.
NOTE: Davis lived in the USA where standard drink volumes are slightly different to Australia & UK. The USA volumes are used here converted to litre and ml.
The official cause of death was “caffeine-induced cardiac event causing a probable arrhythmia,” the coroner concluded. Source: Washington Post
Caffeine can kill.
WARNING: “Mixing caffeine with alcohol is a dangerous practice because it may lead to higher levels of alcohol consumption as the person often believes and feels they are more alert,” said Dr Robert Glatter, ER doctor at Lenox Hill Hospital, NYC . “The risk of alcohol poisoning increases as people consume more alcohol because they feel the caffeine will keep them awake and alert.” Source: USA Today
Posted in Caffeine Math, Units Volume, Year 7 mathspig, Year 9 Mathspig | Tagged back to school, caffeine, calculations, coke, cola, content, danger, dangerous, energy drinks, kill, Math %, Middle school, real world, volume, warning | 1 Comment »
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