Comments on: A Clock, Speedometer, and Odometer walk into … http://samjshah.com/2009/08/13/a-clock-speedometer-and-odometer-walk-into/ Thu, 31 May 2012 12:38:58 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Mr. H http://samjshah.com/2009/08/13/a-clock-speedometer-and-odometer-walk-into/#comment-1223 Sun, 16 Aug 2009 23:15:42 +0000 http://samjshah.com/?p=1465#comment-1223 I give a project based on similar concept in pre-calc at the end of the year. I stole it from my master teacher when I was doing student teaching and modified it a bit.

Student drive with parents or friends for 20 minutes (preferably on freeway/highway, traffic lights are not friendly to this, not sure how this will work in New York). Record the distance and speed at 20 second intervals. I had them record on a clipboard while someone else was driving. Some students figured it would be safer to take pictures using cellphone instead of asking someone to read off the values. Use a trip meter/odometer if available, if not then treat current reading as 0. Like how year 2009 is year zero on a graph.

Differential portion
Plot distance over time. Calculate slope between adjacent points (keep the units!!!). Compare with recorded values for speed (review unit conversion if necessary).

Integral portion
Plot speed over time. Use trapezoids for find the areas (keep the units!!!). Compare with recorded values for distance (review unit conversion if necessary).

What’s the connection? They use PowerPoint to present and Excel to create charts and table.

]]> By: samjshah http://samjshah.com/2009/08/13/a-clock-speedometer-and-odometer-walk-into/#comment-1209 Thu, 13 Aug 2009 04:40:36 +0000 http://samjshah.com/?p=1465#comment-1209 Yeah… yeah…

]]> By: Mr. K http://samjshah.com/2009/08/13/a-clock-speedometer-and-odometer-walk-into/#comment-1208 Thu, 13 Aug 2009 04:11:20 +0000 http://samjshah.com/?p=1465#comment-1208 Better find a picture without a tach…

(but yes, the exercise is great.)

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