8th Grade Honors Blog

What Do You Think?

2010-05-13T11:29:00.003-07:00

What DO YOU THINK?!?! Help Others, Help Yourself!
Rules of the game: Provided your peers with feedback.
-You must review TWO websites in every Grade Level =SIX websites Per Person!

-You must answer the following questions FOR EVERY WEBSITE & STATE YOUR EVIDENCE!

-What does state your evidence mean?!?! State your evidence means you must give a detailed explanation for why you think what you think. You may NOT only say, “They did a good job!” or “It was horrible!” You must back up your thoughts with evidence about WHY they did a good job.

Questions:

Who are you talking about?
•   State the initials and grade level of the authors.

What do you think of the content?
•   How was the quality of the math?
•   Was it easy to understand?

Did it grab your attention?
•   What did you think of the graphics?
•   Did it make you want to do math (or at least try it out)?

What suggestions do you have?
•   What suggestions would you give to the authors?
•   What was the best part of the site?
•   What part of the site needed improvement?

What about the rubric?
•   Did they follow the rubric?
•   What section did they do the best on?
•   What section did they need to improve on?

What grade would you give you site?
•   A – B – C – D – F (and why)?

Monty Hall

2010-04-01T11:23:00.001-07:00

Ok, so today we are going to play a simple game. The game goes like this:

1. You are presented three doors.
2. You pick a door.
3. Another door is opened and you are given the chance to keep the door you picked or switch and select a new door.

What will you do? Wait what does mathematics tell you to do?

Task one: Tell us what you would do up front. Would you keep your original door or switch and select another door? Tell us why you chose to do what you did. Make sure to support your answer with mathematics!

Task Two: Go to the page below and play the game. Make sure to record your outcomes in the table or organizational chart.

Game

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/08/science/08monty.html

Task Three: Go the the Explore the Let's Make a Deal post below and tell us if you were right.

Good Luck and Have Fun!

Some Sides

2010-02-25T20:12:00.000-08:00

You have to make a square-bottomed, box (without a lid,) with a height of three inches and a volume of approximately 42 cubic inches. You will be taking a piece of cardboard, cutting three-inch squares from each corner, scoring between the corners, and folding up the edges. What should be the dimensions of the cardboard, to the nearest quarter inch?

Credit: Elizabeth Stapal

Be sure to include an explaination of how you solved this and an equation that would be helpful in solving this problem. Then solve the equation to prove your answer. Be sure to include all the steps in your solution with the equation. We should never have to guess what you did or feel like there is a step missing for either your process or your equation.

Are you kidding me?

2010-02-18T21:52:00.000-08:00

You are thinking about buying a beautiful new hybrid sedan. The car is on sale and costs $20,000. You know you are only keeping the car for a couple of years, probably just enough to get yourself through college but it could be longer if you don't get your dream job right out of college.

You are fortunate enough to be able to pay cash for the car, so there are no pesky payments or interest to worry about when buying your car. The salesman tells you the car will decreases in value at the rate of 20 percent each year, based on the value at the beginning of the year. At the end of how many years will the value of the car first be less than half the price you are paying for it? You will need to include your process for determining when it will reach half the value of the purchase price as well as your solution. There are a couple of ways to detemine the solution.

Further, how long will you keep your car before selling it? Make sure to include a rational for your decision. (Keep in mind by the time you buy your next car it will definetly be more expensive than the price you are paying today.)

Valentine Treats

2010-02-11T20:36:00.001-08:00

Valentine Treats

The students in Mr. Sweet’s class exchange valentines with each other. Each student in the class gives a valentine to every student in the class. They do not give a valentine to themselves. Each student also gives a valentine to Mr. Sweets.

The thickness of each valentine is one-sixteenth of an inch. When the students stack all the valentines in one pile, the height of the stack is 5 feet 4 inches.

Mr. Sweets does not give valentines to his students. Instead he gives each student a chocolate candy heart. How many chocolate candy hearts should Mr. Sweets buy?

Be sure to explain your answer completely. There could be more than one answer to this problem.

2010-02-04T22:14:00.000-08:00

Open the PDF called Circles and Triangles. Here is the link to find the actual problem.

Link to Circles and Triangles

This POW may take two periods. Answer all the questions. You will need to use paint for this activity. If you need help let me know. You can put your answers in a word document (make sure to cut and paste your illustrations in the document,) and e-mail to outr math class honors email and entitle it "Seeing Circles." Make sure you name is somewhere in the document. (Not on the picture please.) I will post your responses on our webpage. I will include the link here when they are uploaded.

Lovely job on your solutions. To compare your solutions you can go to our website or you can click on the link below:

YOUR SOLUTIONS

Wow!

2010-01-07T21:32:00.000-08:00

Well we finially got the lab back. Hooray!

Today you will need to scroll down to the "He Shoots He Scores" and finish the post. If you were wise your work is in your "to be graded" or your documents file. It should help you re-visit this problem. Make sure to fully explain your solution so anyone can understand what you did to solve the problem and what your solution(s) mean. Be sure to provide symbolic proof (including all your step,) to support your answer.

Ms. L.

Thanksgiving

2009-11-20T09:24:00.000-08:00

What better subject for the week following Thanksgiving than LEFTOVERS? This puzzle isn't very hard if you're good at keeping track of information.

The Dunn family had several guests for Thanksgiving weekend. The menu for Thanksgiving dinner included turkey and candied yams (of course!) as well as orange rolls and pie. There was a lot of leftover food (except for the yams -- they disappeared quickly), making for good snacking all weekend. Each of the pies had been cut into six pieces, giving a total number of pie slices equal to the number of orange rolls initially baked by Mrs. Dunn. At Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday everyone ate two orange rolls and one slice of pie each. That night four of the guests left for home, but the next day everyone remaining at the house ate another orange roll and three more slices of pie each. As of Friday night, Mr. Dunn noted that there were still 7 orange rolls and two-thirds of a pie remaining.

Turkey sandwiches were also very popular fare that weekend. On Friday everyone in the house ate an equal number of turkey sandwiches. Two more guests left for home on Friday night. Then on Saturday everyone remaining at the house ate an equal number of turkey sandwiches, though they ate one fewer sandwich per person than they had eaten on Friday. Mr. Dunn calculated that there were eleven more sandwiches eaten on Friday than were eaten on Saturday.

Now, sort through all of that and tell me: how many turkey sandwiches were eaten at the Dunn house on Friday?

October 2nd, 2009

2009-10-01T22:53:00.000-07:00

Seesaw

The Yucaipa Middle School football team had just finished a weight training workout. Before leaving, each of the players stepped up on the scale. Marvin weighed in at 250 lbs., Ali was 100 lbs., Rasheed was 150 lbs., and Pedro was 125 lbs. Leaving practice, these four friends took a shortcut through the neighboring elementary school playground. Marvin spotted a seesaw, sat on one end, and challenged his teammates:

Who can sit on the other side of the seesaw to make it balance?

In turn, Ali, Rasheed, and Pedro each tried sitting on the seesaw across from Marvin -- and each succeeded.

Then Ali sat by himself on one end and returned the challenge -- and again each succeeded. How did they do it?

Explain in words how to solve this kind of problem in general -- no matter what the weights and distances. All the information you need to solve the problem is given. You may have to read the problem a couple of times and think about the seesaw.

In your explanation, be sure to include the following:

1. The two distances from the fulcrum and the weight of the teammate that balanced the seesaw with Marvin on one end.

2. Two more combinations that successfully balanced with Ali.

3. A formula for the general case that you described in your process.

4. Use complete sentences to explain complete thoughts and rich details about the process.

Good Luck Ms. L.

P.S. Happy Birthday Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

Friday September 25th

2009-09-25T09:08:00.000-07:00

Today you will do two things.

Practice equations.
Post on the Wiki

Below I have given you five links. Please play at least two rounds of each link. Please play them in order. You must play the highest level available before going on to the next site. You may play lower levels but you must play the highest. (You may play these in partners.)

Site 1

Site 2

Site 3

Site 4

Site 5

I don't know if these will work on our school computers, but they are fun so give them a try.

1

2

3

After you are done you will hunt the internet for math games we can play on Fridays. You will post it to the class wiki. I have set up a game page. Be sure to put it under the appropriate age band and content standard. Also, add a description so people will know if they want to play the game.

Have fun.
Ms. L.

He Shoots! He Scores!

2009-09-03T20:02:00.000-07:00

When Bo got home from his basketball game last night, looking pretty pleased with himself, his roommates asked him how it went. He said that he had 10 rebounds, 2 blocks, 3 assists, and equaled or bettered his season high in points. Naturally they wanted to know exactly how many points he scored. Since he never likes to give them a straight answer, he told them the following:

• I didn't shoot any free throws.

• The number of 2-point baskets I made is more than twice the number of 3-point baskets I made.

• The number of 2-pointers I made is less than or equal to 8.

• My previous season high was 18 points.

Now the roommates had to do some thinking! Using t to represent the number of 3-pointers he made, g to represent the number of 2-pointers, and f to represent the number of free throws, write equations or inequalities to represent all of the information given above. You should have four statements.

1. Decide which of the four graphs below best represents the information given in the problem. Explain your choice carefully!

2. What are all of the possible point totals for Bo?

If you would like to see the image more clearly click on the graph you want to see.

Anh's Code

2009-08-21T00:40:00.000-07:00

Each group in Anh's math class is making up a secret math code, where unfamiliar symbols stand for five different mathematical operations. Anh's group is going to challenge Aurora's group to crack the code used in the following equations:

Aurora's group's results will be verified by asking them to evaluate this expression:

What should they get?

Name the operation for each symbol. Think about this carefully.

Carefully and concisely, write your explanation of how you figured it out, use these capital letters to substitute for the symbols:

the heart is H
the star is S
the raindrop is R
the lightening bolt is L
the bull's-eye is B

This weeks solution:

There was really only one way I saw that you approached Anh's Code and that was to start by trying to figure out which operation stood for which figure. Once you figured out that the fifth operation was "exponentiation" then you could find the answer to the expression. The difficult part was in explaining your thinking regarding how you found the operation! Most of you stated you used trial and error. Many of you put equations as proof of your solution however this did not explain how you found the matching operation to the given symbols.

The code is:
(The symbols used are the conventional symbols used on a computer to express the operation indicated.)

Heart = (+) or addition
Raindrop = (-) or subtraction
Bulls Eye = (*) or multiplication
Star = (/) or division
Lightning Bolt = (^) or exponents

After solving the final equation, using order of operation, your solution should have been 13.
Ms. L.