Winter Solstice 2023
It is really dark out now. Why is that?
Students appreciate how their latitude effects the darkness of their late afternoon location as they study the earth's tilt and the logic of da...
Number Sense
Genres
Grade
Do I have enough wrapping paper?
In this problem based activity students first guess and then try to calculate whether they will have enough paper to wrap this present without taping pieces of wrapping paper together.
Con...
The size of chocolates
In this activity students assume that all of our pieces of chocolate are about the same thickness and proceed to approximate their volumes by comparing only their surface areas.
Consider sh...
How much pee is in this pool?
After chlorination, it has been hard to measure the quantity of pollutants in pool water. A Canadian chemist, Xing-Fang Li, has found a marker for urine that chlorine doesn't disguise....
How big of a crepe can you make?
At Costco you can buy this huge tub of nutella. It contains nearly 7 pounds of chocolaty-hazelnut spread.
We use nutella to make banana/nutella crepes. How long will that tub last u...
Will one roll be enough?
Students can use the man or the basket as a reference as they try to approximate the size of these gifts and how much wrapping paper will actually be needed. Approximation, surface are...
Wrapping presents on the diagonal
Dr. Sara Santos is a popular mathematician and speaker on mathematics. She has worked out a method for wrapping boxes (rectangular prisms) as efficiently as possible. (W...
2 New Macy's Parade balloons
As the Macy's Parade returns to public viewing, here are two balloons that Macy's artists have added. Can you figure out their dimensions? Macy's give their dimensions in bicycle lengths, taxi w...
Collecting the most candy
Use your student’s Halloween enthusiasm to do a study on volumes. We’ve created an activity that asks students to calculate the volume of candy containers that are silly and intriguing. ...
How much snow is that?
Start this activity with: What do you notice? What do you wonder?
How many inches of snow produced that pile? How much snow in volume is on top of the car? H...