Day 3 - Cagey Problem

Today students worked on optimization review. We worked on finding the maximum area with a fixed perimeter:

I used a similar activity with grade 9s last year and remember that they didn't really know what to do with the Q-tips (I used Q-tips instead of toothpicks so students couldn't stab each other). I started them out by giving an example of one rectangle on the board. They quickly got the table filled out:

Students then needed to make a scatter plot:

While a few made a couple mistakes at the start, soon I had some pretty nice looking parabolas!

This took very little time. I could have done Day 3b, but I remembered from yesterday that students were going to need more time for their floor plans. While they made nice looking floor plans, they did not take into consideration their scale. Their plans needed to be for a floor plan that is roughly 1200 m2. If they didn't keep their areas in mind as they were working, then finding their scale after the fact is hard. So I decided to just take it slow (especially since I added 2 more students to my class list today!) and give them more time for their projects.