I was able to do Barbie Bungee in my Accelerated Algebra 1 and 2 classes plus my class of seniors in Futures basic math. I wrote about Barbie Bungee with Algebra 2 earlier.
For my seniors, I wanted to extent it a bit, so we had her jump off our senior balcony. First we had to figure out how to measure it. Our only tools were 3 meter sticks and 5 rulers. Off to work they got. One went up and hung a meter stick up. One stood below and reached the meter stick up. Then another student added a meter stick below this one and then turned it for another, and they filled in with rulers.
It was 4 meters and 41 inches. How's that for units? So, it took us a while to convert it to centimeters, but we got to 506 cm.
They went to work in two groups. Barbie ended up getting tattooed in one group:
They predicted 48 and 51 rubber bands, pretty close. Off to the balcony to drop them. Of course, it coincided with lunch getting out, so we happened to have a big audience. She jumped and was quite a ways away from the ground. We went back and one group added 6 more and one group 10 more. These were just guesses. The 10 was too much. 55 bands was just barely too much, one less was perfect - 54. And, the kids wanted to know why the math didn't work the first time. We brainstormed and they figured out they may have made some tiny errors in actually measuring.
A great lesson.
One students asked where I came up with these projects. Blogs and twitter :)
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