What’s Goin’ On In Room 133

Enriched Math Collegues -

Take a look at page 267, #24-27, and 34-36.  You can DO IT;)!

(Y Feliz Cumpleanos, Senor!)

Speed Incarnate – Crossing the Room in One Second!

No, Colleagues, we’re not talking about The Flash (one of my favorites, by the way).  We are talking about the fastest human on the planet, Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, who seems to be able to crush records every time he lines up in the blocks.  At the World Championships last year he blazed through the 100 meter dash in an astonishing 9.58 seconds.  When you’re as old as I am (yes, 51!) THAT is a mind-boggling time.  (His 9.58 seconds, not my 51 years!)

So just how fast is that?  Can you calculate that in miles per hour (mph) ?  How about in kilometers per hour (kph)?  Tell you what – try doing it in kph first, then try converting that into mph?  Show me you’re work and let’s see what we get! 

Rock on!

OK, Colleagues; pull out that textbook and let’s get busy!  All homework is due on Wed!

Math 7:  On page 290, do even-numbered questions 14 thru 20, and on page 291 do all questions from 32 to 36.  Extra credit for Ques #38!

Enriched Math: On page 266, do all questions from 4 thru 15, as well as #36 and #37.

Of course, Writing Prompt #11 is now ready and waiting!  That’s due next week Friday.

And folks, you might want to take a look at Mrs Sipple’s link on her portaportal.  There is a ton of useful links there to help you get up to speed on ratios, proportions and a lot more.  Take a look, Colleagues - and rock on!

Look up the definitions for all the words and terms listed on page 2 of your interactive notebook.  You can use the textbook or – better still – use the links to your online vocabulary resources, such as Math Is Fun and the Math Playground.  Go to the Great Links page for those.

Update for 23 Feb (Tues):  Use Page 10 to create and solve five different inequalities.

Update for 24 Feb (Wed): Do Page 12 (Word Problem) and Page 14 (Riddles).

On August 28, 1963, more than 250,000 demonstrators descended upon the nation’s capital to participate in the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.”  The National Archives has a program and photo among the collection they call ”100 Milestone Documents” of American history.  The King Institute at Stanford University chronicles much of Dr Martin Luther King’s impact on the world, including his address at the march.  You can hear Dr King as he spoke to the crowd here.

Organizers had a lot to do to make it a success and as usual somebody had to do the math.  Suppose you were an organizer and you had to find bus transportation for a crowd of 250,000.  If each bus could hold 50 people, can you write an equation that would show the number of buses, b, that you would need to move the crowd?

What if there were more than 250,000 people in the crowd?  Can you wrtie an inequality that would show how many buses you need?  Can you graph that inequality?

Let c represent the number of people in the crowd.  How can you use that variable to show that there were at least 250,000 people there?  How about at least 250,000 and up to 500,000 – what would that inequaltiy look like?  (Hint: remember the lobsters in the lake in our Brain Pop video?)

Peace.

Looks like Mother Nature has given us quite a few breaks over the last few days – with more to come it seems!  But that does not mean we need to cut ourselves any slack in our pursuit of understanding the Mathematics!  As a matter of fact, Colleagues, it means we must redouble our efforts. 

So here we have posted the outline of your quest whilst in your humble abode (in other words, here’s your homework!)

Wed – (Update on 04 Feb: This will be Thursday’s homework due on Friday.  OK, so that’s a little slack!)

Math 7 – On pages 572-573, do questions 10-12 in all three sections marked Lessons 4-2, 4-3 &  4-5. (Skip Lesson 4-4)

Enriched Math – On page 740, Lesson 7-3, do questions 1-5 and 10-15.

 Thu – (Update 04 Feb: This will be Friday’s homework due on Monday.  OK, so that’s a little more slack!)

Math 7 –  On pages 572-573, do questions 13-15 in Lessons 4-2, 4-3 and 4-5.  (Skip Lesson 4-4)

Enriched Math – On pages 740-741,  do questions 1-5 in both sections marked Lessons 7-4 & 7-5.

Fri –

Writing Prompt #10 is posted and due on Friday, Feb 12^th.   

Also look for EXTRA CREDIT by doing the Weekend Word Problem and the Hot Quiz (20-40 questions, and remember to put your name on it!)

 Git ‘er done!

Colleagues, I am going through your Journals and several of you are missing Writing Prompts #7, 8 and 9.  Very distressing, folks, since you had all this time to do them. 

If you’re going to do well on Tuesday’s test – and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t! – don’t spoil all that hard work by blowing off the Writing Prompts.  They won’t take long to do, but they will spoil your grade if you don’t do them!  (And if you think your grade is “teetering on the edge”, you definitely need to do them.) 

Get them done IN YOUR JOURNAL and show them to me.  (If you have them on separate sheets of paper, if you typed them up and want to bring in a print-out, I will allow you to tape/glue them into your Journal, but get them done and SHOW them to me!) 

They carry a lot of weight in the grade book.   Can’t make it any plainer than that, Colleagues – GIT ER DUN!

Colleagues, looks like we had a good review today. 

We covered – and recovered! – knowledge of Properties (Commutative & Associative for multiplication and addition, Identity & Inverse for multiplication and addition, multiplicative property of Zero, and last, but not least…the Distributive Property). 

Then we did a review of our Equations (that’s the two sheets of orange paper with 20 questions on it, sports fans.  Give it a look if you haven’t yet!).  And some of you even received the more comprehensive review packet that starts with the Order of Operations on the front and ends with Equations and Inequalities on the back.   That packet packs quite a punch (try saying that 3 times fast!). 

To help you get ready, spend some time looking over the notes in the review packet and answering some (or all) of the questions in each section.  If you did not get the review packet in your period that means that you have plenty to do with the worksheets you have (above), and the links from this blog to the different sites that we went over in class this week. 

Work on the parts that give you the most trouble so that you’re prepared for anything that comes.  (And that includes doing my online Hot Quiz, baby! – see the post below!)  —Kudos to Sophia, Chrishaun, Olivia, Christina, and Kandace for being the first ones to send in your quiz!  And one other person who got 100% on 20 questions, but failed to give me their name – oh, dear!

On Monday, we will look at Order of Ops, making sense out of verbal expressions in math and then we will dive into reading and analyzing math word problems (the ones you did on page 153, Math 7 colleagues.  And you Enriched Math folks – yours is on page 125). 

Take the time to prepare, Colleagues – it does a body good !

OK, Colleagues – second quarter test is coming up.  It’s going to cover a lot – from fraction-decimal-percent comparisons and conversions, to powers and exponents, to order of operations, to variables and experessions, to verbal expressions and word problems, to solving equations and inequalities, not to mention the vocabulary that goes along with that and – oh yeah! – know your properties, too!  (All of them!)

Yeah, it’s a lot – but I know you can handle it!  For one, you’re taking the time to read this when you could be surfing on to something else.  And for two, you have a ton of links right here to practice your stuff and get immediate feedback on.  So you’ll make it alright.  Just give yourself a chance by checking out the Great Links page.  In fact, to help you out, I just posted a link to our brand new Hot Quiz program.  Didn’t know about that, did you?  Check it out!!

Colleagues, I am sure that you have seen the news about the devastating earthquake that hit the island country of Haiti this week.   Sadly, many thousands of lives were lost because it hit a region where more than 3 million people live.  The full extent of this tragedy will not be known for a long time.  Homes, schools, churches, roads, bridges – so many things that we take for granted in life were completely destroyed in seconds and an untold number of families had their lives ripped apart.  This is a very painful time for anyone with family or friends in the area – please be mindful.

Earthquakes are a natural phenomenon on this planet and there is nothing in our power that can stop one from happening.  But wouldn’t it be a good thing if we could at least predict when one is going to happen?  So that at least we can take steps to warn others?  And wouldn’t it be a good thing to build homes and buildings that would not collapse if and when an earthquake does occur?  Well, engineers are studying those very questions – and Math is helping them find answers.

Hear from those who are working on this problem.

See the Presidential Palace before and after the earthquake.

A quick look at what we know so far!

Not your regular Weekend Word Problem, is it?  True.  Sometimes we need to take a moment and put things in perspective.  A lot of times we ask “Why are we studying this?”  This is one of those times when I can tell you that there is only one reason to study math and that is to DO SOMETHING WITH IT TO MAKE LIFE ON THIS PLANET A LITTLE BETTER!  It doesn’t matter what scale you succeed on, Colleagues – the real success is that you try!  

And now for our problem:  Scientists determine the epicenter of an earthquake by measuring the time it takes for surface waves to travel between two places.  Surface waves travel about 6 kilometers per second through Earth’s crust.  (The “quick look” above shows you what this is like.)  Let’s say the distance between Los Angeles and Phoenix is about 600 kilometers.  First, write a multiplication equation to find how long it would take surface waves to travel from Los Angeles to Phoenix.  Then solve the equation.