Infographic: World Trade Center Reborn

As the 10th anniversary of 9/11 draws near, we'll be hearing a lot about the World Trade Center. This infographic from history.com is filled with facts and figures about the rebuilding of the new World Trade Center.

Whether or not you decide to use this infographic for creating math problems, the information on this infographic shows numerous ways that math is used and needed in the "Real World". You could use it to have a discussion about how engineers and construction workers use math every day.

The section about who's involved in the rebuilding efforts demonstrates how many people and organizations are needed to take on such a huge project. What a great way to start a discussion about teamwork! 

Below the infographic, you'll find some possible math questions that could be asked based on the information about the new World Trade Center.

via history.com

 

A few possible math questions that come to mind from this infographic: 

---"MORE THAN 2,500 WORKERS ON AN AVERAGE DAY" 

What do they mean by average? How would they figure out this value? 

---"Each pool holds up to 450,000 gallons of water, which is enough to fill 50 Empire State Buildings to capacity." 

How did they determine the capacity of the Empire State Building? What other mathematical vocabulary word could be used to replace the world capacity? 

___"Total Weight OF ALL TREES IS 7,500 TONS...THAT'S HALF THE WEIGHT OF THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE AND 30 TIMES THE WEIGHT OF THE STATUE OF LIBERTY." 

How many times more does the Brooklyn Bridge weigh than the Statue of Liberty? 

---"Each pool features a 30-foot man-made waterfall, the largest in North America." 

If the reflecting pools are square, what is the approximate area of the base of each pool? Why wouldn't this be the exact area of the base? (hint: look at the picture) 

---"71 ELEVATORS Five are high-speed express cars moving at 2,000 feet per minute, or almost 23 mph. 45 SECONDS TO THE TOP" 

How many feet will the high-speed elevator travel if it takes 45 seconds for it to go from the ground to the top? 

---"2.6 MILLION SQUARE FEET OF FLOOR SPACE...104 FLOORS" 

What is the average number of square feet of floor space per floor of the building? 

How would you use this infographic?  Leave a comment and share your ideas.

It's Never Been Easier to Make Math Relevant for Students

How often do you hear “I’m bored!”?  For many math teachers it’s way too often!  Fortunately for teachers and students, math doesn’t have to be boring anymore!

One of the best ways to boost engagement and motivation is to make content interesting and relevant to students.  Multimedia makes it extremely easy to accomplish these goals!   We now have unlimited access to images and videos that can enhance math instruction and give some relevance to the math concepts we teach.  We also have the ability to easily create our own images and videos for learning.  Best of all it doesn’t have to take much time and effort on the part of the teacher to make this happen!

Recently infographics have become very popular.  This is great news for math teachers because infographics are just one more form of multimedia that we can use to make math interesting and relevant.   Infographics are filled with statistics that can be used to start mathematical discussions.  Infographics can also be used to replace worksheets.   Rather than giving students a worksheet with proportions to solve, give them and infographic and have them solve proportions based on the true statistics.  In addition to presenting “real” statistics and information, infographics are often based on topics that many students would find interesting.

Some infographics that I’ve recently come across:

·      The First 48 Hours of Mozilla (Firefox browser)                                                     http://loledservices.blogspot.com/2011/03/infographic-first-48-hours-of-mozilla.html

·      Statistics About Japan (Statistics from the Japan Disaster)                                       http://loledservices.blogspot.com/2011/03/infographic-statistics-about-japan.html

 ·     The History of Apple’s iPod                                                                                    http://www.digitalsurgeons.com/ipod-timeline-infographic/

 

·      The Business of Facebook                                                                                         http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/154/numerology-the-business-of-facebook.html

This infographic was created by Fast Company.  Their blog post about the infographic points out some of the highlights of the data represented in the infographic.  

o   Facebook has 610,736,920 MEMBER PROFILES. That's once for every ELEVEN people on the planet.

o   Analysts estimate that Facebook pulled in $1.86 BILLION in advertising in 2010. That’s expected to grow 118% this year, to $4 billion.

o   EVERY 60 SECONDS ON FACEBOOK, USERS send 230,000 messages, update 95,000 statuses, write 80,000 wall posts, tag 65,000 photos, share 50,000 links—and affirm or disparage them all with half a million comments.

With this data students can solve proportions, make graphs, calculate percentages, and make predictions.  You could also take surveys of the class and compare the class data with the data from the infographic.  

When using infographics with students, it’s important to discuss the fact that the data may change.  In the case of the Japan Disaster Infographic some of the data may change, but some will not.  In the case of the Mozilla and Facebook infographics the data may have changed before you even have a chance to use it with your students.  These discussions may provide additional problems to solve.  Just ask some “What if” questions and have students make predictions about how the data is likely to change.  You can even follow-up a week or two later by having students look up some of the same statistics to see if their predictions about the rate of change were close.

An Interesting Blog of Math Illustrations --- Picasso Math

Picasso Math is an interesting blog containing illustrations of math topics. These can be used in many ways. I think students would enjoy them. This would also be a great way to bring Novelty to the classroom.

Here are a few ideas:

• Use them as writing/journal prompts. Students could describe the math topic being illustrated or describe what the illustration means.

• Show one to students and have them create their own for a different math concept/topic. For example: Show this one about dividing fractions (see below) and have students create their own about multiplying fractions.

• Have students critique the image. Do they thing it best represents the math topic? If so, why. If not, why?

Happy Illustrating! Hope you enjoy this great resource!

via picassomath.blogspot.com

Excellent Resources from RealWorldMath.org

via realworldmath.org

Here's an example of a Line Graph that was created using Google Earth. This image is courtesy of Real World Math. This site is definitely worth checking out!