Daily math doesn't have to mean practical situations that everybody gets into all the time. Sometimes, daily math just means math that happens to come up.
Today, A. made a comment that she could jump six times as high on the moon. When I challenged her idea that she was jumping as high from the floor as the top of her head at the peak of her jump, we decided to measure.
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| The very high tech measurement device: a piece of sidewalk chalk in a chalk holder, taped onto a headband. |
First, A. marked the chalk's height against the wall while she was standing.
Then she jumped while applying enough pressure for the chalk to draw on the wall. She did this several times to achieve the highest jump she could.
She measured the distance between her initial marking and the highest point on the chalk line: 20 cm.
Multiplying 20 cm by 6 gives 120 cm, or 1 m 20. How long is that? She rolled out the measuring tape, and we also held it up vertically to get a sense of how high the bottom of her feet would get on the moon. A. was impressed.
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