It is January and the Friday Fave is C-O-L-D.
The Fave understands that Sunday’s predicted high of 20°F is not technically twice as warm as tomorrow’s predicted high of 10°F, nor five times as warm as the current 4°F, but it sure is going to feel like it.
Temperatures don’t really work proportionally (a fact that can be derived from the fact that 0°C is not the same as 0°F), but you know what does work proportionally?
A clicking robot!
This week’s Friday Fave is Click Battle, in which we challenge students to predict how many times they can click their mouse buttons in 10 seconds.
We give them a chance to practice for five seconds, and then to revise their predictions.
Are your students robots? Is their click rate consistent?
And if survival in the end times required having the fastest-clicking robot on your team (and it obviously will!) then which of these two robots should you pick? Why?
How will your students reason about this choice? The strategies they use to make these decisions are the real mathematics here. Do they compare 6 seconds to 4 seconds, which is 1.5 times as long? Do they use unit rates? If so, which unit rate: clicks per second, or seconds per click? Do they think about common multiples of 4 and 6, or of 38 and 23? Linger on your students’ strategies, and celebrate their creative ideas!
Now get those clicking fingers (and the brains they’re wired to) warmed up, and prepare for the Click Battle!
While you’re exploring the wonderful world of proportionality, here are a few other faves to try.