2.11.2010

Horton's Clover Hunt

Horton's Clover Hunt

Who doesn't love the story Horton Hears a Who! by Dr. Seuss. For those of you who aren't familiar with this particular tale, Horton the elephant takes on the task of protecting tiny creatures living on a dust speck that he has placed on a clover.

At one point in the story, a bird steals the clover from Horton and drops it over a very large clover field at 6:56 a.m. Ever the faithful protector and true to his promise to save them, "Because, after all, a person's a person, no matter how small," Horton begins the enormous task of searching for the lost clover.


But clover, by clover, by clover he found
That the one that he sought for was just not around.
And by noon poor old Horton, more dead than alive,
Had picked, searched, and piled up, nine thousand and five.

1. At this rate, estimate how many clovers Horton picked each minute.
2. Approximately how many seconds did Horton spend on each clover?

 For each of the above answers, round to the nearest whole unit.

 The story continues

Then, on through the afternoon, hour after hour...
Till he found them at last! On the three millionth flower!

You need only choose one of these questions to answer:

A. If Horton continued at the rate you calculated above without pausing, how long would it take him to reach the three millionth flower? Be sure to answer this question in a way that makes sense (in other words, don't give an answer like 72 hours when 3 days would give us a better sense of how long this is).

or

B. In the story it seems that Horton finds the clover later the same day. If he continued picking from noon until he found the clover at six o'clock that same evening, approximately how fast would he have to work?

This weeks POW is fun,
Comprehensive answers will be done,
Incomplete answers are not fine,
Nor is just having the "answer" in mind,
Working in partners will do
But don't post until your answer is true.  :-)


Dr. Suesseckman

Solution: Most of you were right on the money for the rate per minute and also seconds per clover, however you were kind of all over the place for the last two questions.   ;-)  Please think these through carefully before posting you answers.  Many of you posted the same answer, exactly!  You are given the privilege of working together however when it comes to posting it needs to be your own work, thoughts and words.  Duplicate posts will no longer accepted.  I will accept the first post and credit it's author and then reject any posts using the same verbiage and will not credit the author with a score.  Further, the posts writing has moved away from the posting requirements.  Please review the requirements as future posts that do not meet the requirements will not be posted nor will credit be assigned for the problem. 


1. At this rate, estimate how many clovers Horton picked each minute.
a. 30 clovers per minute

2. Approximately how many seconds did Horton spend on each clover?
a. 2 seconds per clover. 

You need only choose one of these questions to answer:
a. If Horton continued at the rate you calculated above without pausing, how long would it take him to reach the three millionth flower? Be sure to answer this question in a way that makes sense (in other words, don't give an answer like 72 hours when 3 days would give us a better sense of how long this is). 
a. It would take Horton about 10 weeks of non-stop picking to get 3 million clovers. 

or

b. In the story it seems that Horton finds the clover later the same day. If he continued picking from noon until he found the clover at six o'clock that same evening, approximately how fast would he have to work? 
a. 8,308 clovers per minute to finish by 6:00 pm.










2.04.2010

Best Brownies



The bakery chef at Central Supermarket is collecting the ingredients to bake some brownies. His cookbook contains this ingredient list:

INGREDIENTS FOR BROWNIES
1/2 cup butter
1.5 ounces unsweetened chocolate
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup chopped nuts
Use a 6-inch by 9-inch baking pan.

    However, the chef needs to use a commercial-size baking pan, 18 inches by 2 feet.
Figure out how much of each ingredient would be needed to bake brownies in this pan.  Explain how you found your answer and how you know it is correct.

(The brownies should still have the same thickness as in the original recipe.)

1.   The answers for this post were kind of all over the place.  A couple of things you should have been thinking about as you solved this problem:

2.   Did you include the units?  Were you suppose to use cups, teaspoons? This would have a huge effect on the new batch of brownies. 

3.   Did you fractions make sense?  Could a larger recipe call for less of an ingredient?

4.   How many dimensions are you enlarging?  This problem call for you to use the area of the pan, (we didn't even have to think about the volume - whew!) which is two dimensions.  Because you were using two dimensions we need to take that scale factor for both sides and multiply them together or as we learned in the scaling project to square our scale factor.

Make sure to slow down and think about the POW if it seems so obvious you may want to re-read the problem to be sure you have all the information you need to solve the problem.
Ms. L.

The correct answer:

The new recipe

4 cups butter
12 ounces unsweetened chocolate
8 cups sugar
16 eggs
8 teaspoons vanilla
6 cups all-purpose flour
8/3 cups chopped nuts







11.20.2009

Thanksgiving


A large Thanksgiving banquet served between 500 and 600 people. The dinner rolls came in baker's dozens (packages of 13). After everyone had been served a roll there were a number of empty packages plus one open package with 10 rolls left. The pies for dessert had each been cut into ninths, and after everyone had been served a slice there were a number of empty pie tins plus one pie tin with 4 slices left. The tables in the banquet hall each had room for 15 guests. All but one of the tables were full. How many people were seated at that last table?

Remember to explain how you got your answer.  You should have all the steps in your explaination.  Someone who does not understand math should be able to look at your answer and how you solved the problem and understand how to work through the problem.

Have fun and good luck,
Ms. L.

10.02.2009

Building Bouquets




Jana owns and operates an independent flower shop. To help sell more flowers (and cut down on waste), she offers a daily special of bouquets or corsages created from "leftovers" from larger orders.


With today's batch of leftovers, Jana decides to try 4 flowers in each bouquet, but she has three extra flowers left. To make pricing easier, she wants the specials to be the same size, so she tries making the bouquets with 7 flowers each... but then there are two flowers left. If she makes bundles of 8 flowers, she has three flowers left.

What is the smallest possible number of flowers that Jana has to work with?

With the number of flowers determined above, how many bouquets or corsages and of what size can Jana make?

Do you think that Jana would ever have enough leftovers that it wouldn't matter if she chose to make bouquets of 7, 8, or 9 flowers? (Don't forget - Jana doesn't want to waste a single flower.)

9.25.2009

Friday the 25th

Today you will learn how to work on the wiki.

You will need to go to our link - (Listed on the side of the page and below.)

Class Wiki

Sign up and create an account, then come and see me.  I will make you a writer.  You may then go looking for math games.  You will add any games you find to the game page on the wiki.  You will create a title for the page, write a description of the game and paste it under the correct grade level and math strand.  Just like in the blog it is very wise to create everything in Word and then cut and past it into the wiki.  (Make sure you have clicked the "EDIT PAGE" button to do your pasting.

See me for any help,
Ms. L.

9.03.2009

Really Thirsty

If we were to fill a glass with water at a constant rate (for example, 1 cubic inch per minute), we could graph the height of the water in the glass as time goes by.


Suppose we fill the three glasses below in such a manner. Match up each glass with the graph that best describes the height of the water in the glass over time. Justify your answer using key features of the glass and the graph.

Describe the glass (or create one in paint,) that would correspond to the leftover graph. (Be sure to save your picture as a JPEG and e-mail to Ms. Leckman at mathclasshonors@yahoo.com)


Here is some student work:




8.28.2009

Hoppy Days

Three green frogs and three brown frogs sit on their own lily pads. There is one spare pad between the two sets of frogs. No pad can support more than one frog at a time.



The green frogs are going to change places with the brown frogs, but must observe the following rules.

• A frog can hop to an adjacent pad.

• A frog can jump over another frog to an unused pad.

• A frog cannot move backward. For example, once a frog moves to the right, it can only continue to move to the right.


1. What is the minimum number of moves needed to have the green frogs switch places with the brown frogs? Describe the movement of the frogs.

http://www.mofunzone.com/online_games/frog_leap.shtml#

SOLUTION:



The minimum hops is 15. I have included a visual for you. You could have drawn the problem out or created a table to help you solve the problem.