How Much Soda Do You Loose From Fizz When Pouring?

Intro:

You know the routine, you open of a 16 ounce bottle of Pepsi and start filling your glass. As you pour the soda you notice a fizz is starting to form causing you to stop and wait so the carbonated bubbles don't spill over the rim of your cup. While waiting you begin to wonder, how much soda am I loosing by pouring it? Maybe I should just drink it from the bottle, at least I wouldn't need to wait for the fizz. The purpose of this activity is to figure out how much, if any, soda you loose when pouring it.

What You Will Need:

• Multiple 16 ounce bottles of soda (one for each group)

• A measuring cup that measures 16 ounces (16 ounces = 2 cups)

• Activity Sheet (below)

• Paper Towels

• An intro speech about being careful to avoid spills

Outline of Activity

Students will split-up in groups. Each group will pour 16 ounces of soda into a measuring cup (WITHOUT SPILLS!). They will wait for the fizz to halt and continue pouring until all soda has been poured. Students will then estimate how much, if any, soda was lost during the pouring stage and then express this number a percentage loss. Note, there will certainly be a margin of error in this activity, as most measuring cups are not accurate and there will be some amount of soda left in the bottle. However, these will serve as great after-activity discussion questions.

After Activity Discussion:

How much soda did each team loose during the process?

Why do you think soda was lost when pouring?

Is this enough loss to avoid pouring?

Does anyone know what creates fizz—be sure to ask your science teacher?

How accurate do you think your estimates are?

What could be throwing off your results?

How much soda do you think is left in the bottle?

Homework:

Estimate how much soda your family looses per month from pouring soda?  

Activity Questions:

1) How much soda is in the bottle?__________

2) How much soda, if any, was lost during the pouring?_____________

3) Express this loss as a percentage_____________

Metal Project

A personal hobby of mine is scrapping old electronics and computers for recycle. Scrap yards pay various prices for different metals which get recycled and reused in the products we buy. The process is a wonderful way to make some extra income while keeping electronic & metal waste out of our landfills.


Here is a project based on this theme.


1) Have each student bring in a tiny piece of metal they find from their home. Here are some suggestions.

2) Talk about the various metals, where they are used and see which ones can be identified by the students (a magnet may be helpful)

Common Metallic Materials

• Iron/Steel - Steel alloys are used for strength critical applications

• Aluminum - Aluminum and its alloys are used because they are easy to form, readily available, inexpensive, and recyclable.

• Copper - Copper and copper alloys have a number of properties that make them useful, including high electrical and thermal conductivity, high ductility, and good corrosion resistance.

• Titanium - Titanium alloys are used for strength in higher temperature (~1000° F) application, when component weight is a concern, or when good corrosion resistance is required

• Nickel - Nickel alloys are used for still higher temperatures (~1500-2000° F) applications or when good corrosion resistance is required.

• Refractory materials are used for the highest temperature (> 2000° F) applications

3) Have students weigh each of their metals.

4) Have students convert their weight to pounds

5) Hand out the following chart for current metal prices http://www.metalprices.com/

Material Rate Per Qty

Aluminum Cans $0.55 LB

#1 Copper $2.50 LB

#2 Copper $2.40 LB

Scrap Metal $7.00 100 LBS

6) Ask each student how much their tiny piece of metal is worth


7) A side project could be have students imagine how much their home, car, etc. would be worth if it was made up of some type of metal.



Water Project

Updated Greek Multiplication Table

Here is an updated Greek Multiplication Table of 10 x 10 (notice there is no zeros)

Running A Lawn Business

Though my profession is teaching mathematics, in the summers, when I'm only teaching part-time at my college, I run a lawn mowing business. Like any business I must calculate my profit by subtracting my costs from my revenue. I think this type of analysis would make a good class project. The goal is simply to getting them thinking about how many variables can go into an equation, though depending on the time you put into the project you could make it a competition or a game or simply a problem. Again, my goal would be to get kids talking in the language of algebra

Ask your students to list all the possible costs that could be incurred in a lawn mowing business and write them on the overhead.

Next, give each student a budget (say $1,000) that they must buy a mower and/or market their business. Next, build an equation to calculate the revenue (R) and costs (C)

P = R - C

C = Fuel, mower, marketing (flyers, adds in the paper, etc)
R = pay per lawn

You could make your profit equation as detailed as you would like, listing as many costs and types of revenue as you would like. You could have kids make flyers for their business, listing the equation on the flyer. Some students may take such knowledge and start their own lawn service. Nevertheless, it's a good introduction to the language and applicability of algebra  

Archamendes and Math In The Sand Box

It is believed that Archamendes wrote in the sand before he wrote on paper (papyrus). I've even read that Archamendes carried with him a box of sand at all times offering him the ability to work on mathematics from anywhere. I believe there is merit in this method. I would encourage you to take your students outside before the school year is over, to the nearest sandbox (or my case, mud) and conduct class with a stick.

Operation Rocky--You Vs. The Test! Standardized Test Project

Operation Rocky--You Vs. The Test! First things first, you must hype of this exercise! You have to sell it! More on this below.
The goal of this project is for students to train for their big upcoming fight (the state test). To do this they must go through daily fights via daily 2-4 question quizzes.
Each day you will give a lecture about an upcoming topic for their state test, at the end of the class each student will take a 2-4 question quiz with a picture of the guy they are fighting for that day. At the end of class, you tally of the grades and mark on a poster if the student won or loss with tally marks
How to plan:
You might not have enough time to re-cover every topic on the test, so pick the top 5-10.


How to introduce the project and make it successful


This is huge! Your kids should be pumped to take on these quizzes, how do you do this?

1st Go out and buy the Rocky soundtrack or at least the theme song and play it everyday during this exercise.

2nd Have students come up with their own fight name Mr. "Mountain-do-the-Dew" Dyke!

3rd Have posters made listing each students name and their fight name with two columns wins and losses

4th Each quiz should have a pic of who they are fighting

5th Play Rocky during the quizzes

6th Say corny of cliché things to get them pumped up like "its you vs. the quiz", "you can do this", "let's see what you got"

7th There is a powerpoint in "math downloads"

Finally, just to give you an overall idea, i would walk around the class punching kids in the arm, allowing kids to punch their quizzes, screaming "Are YOU READY!", doing pushups, jogging in place screaming "we won't go down without a fight". For most this is too over the top

One thing i would redo, is to allow rematches for each quiz

Student Projects For Extra Credit

Students Were asked to create a hands on math extra credit assignment based on one of two themes.

1) The Real Number System
2) The Different Properties

Food & Math Indirect Homework # 3

You want your students to starting seeing math everywhere. You want them to have random math thoughts   throughout their day. Give them some incentive. Assign extra credit for the best math photos. Start with a theme: Food.

Whoever submits the best mathematical food picture wins a surprise (for you to decide) and their picture will be hung in the classroom, etc.

Thinking I'm Crazy? Here you go...

Hiring Your Students As FBI Agents (Cool Way to Teach Area and Circumference of Circles)

Let face it, circles are just not that exciting for math students, especially the area and circumference of circles. 


Let’s change this...

First, hire all your students as FBI agents

Next, they must begin working immediately, as there’s an emergency. Somewhere in the school (you may use town if you would like) is a bomb with a blast radius of 500 feet!

Our job is twofold: We need to know how far back the citizens need to stand to insure their safety (circumference of a circle). Second we need to know what type of damage we are looking at (area of circle).

Now, have them imagine if they were faced with job calculating such information of a nuclear weapon with a blast radius of  plus or minus a mile (Good reference sites for blast radius here and here)