Wednesday, July 3, 2013

Train Speed

While working next to the train tracks in West Virginia, I was lucky enough to see three trains go by. It's possible that it was the same train going by three times.

At any rate, I was wondering, how fast was the train moving, so I took a video as it went down the tracks. 


That would be my Act 1, and from here the students would go about figuring out how fast the train was moving.

I could see this problem being used in a unit about rates and unit co versions. I think it could seve as a nice quick activity to get students thinking and working. 

There are a lot of angles to solving this problem. They could find the carts per second and convert to miles per hour, or they could see how long the driveway is and find out how long it takes a cart to travel that distance.

I might try to give them the original video file and let them manipulate to find the time from there.  

What would you do with this video, and what else have you done that's similar? 

No comments:

Post a Comment