From: Ellen Koivisto & Gene Thompson (offstage@earthlink.net)
Date: Fri Jun 27 2003 - 08:33:16 PDT
Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2003 08:33:16 -0700 Subject: Re: pinhole significant figures From: Ellen Koivisto & Gene Thompson <offstage@earthlink.net> Message-Id: <ABE4653C-A8B4-11D7-A390-000A959C38A8@earthlink.net>
Something like this works best if the students have experience with
cooking, though any practical measuring skills in real-world
circumstances will do (carpentry for example.) And, if you're
particularly sadistic, you can combine studying sig figs with the need
to convert from one unit to another. Give students a cookie recipe,
such as for chocolate chip cookies. This recipe uses teaspoons,
tablespoons, cups, cubes and/or ounces, a pinch, and eggs and a bag as
measuring units. Now give each student a different measuring device.
One gets a 1/2 teaspoon, one gets a single cup measure with no
graduations, one gets a graduated pint measure, one gets a teaspoon,
one gets to use only their hands, etc. They don't even have to try to
make the cookies. They just have to look at the recipe and their
measuring device (and have some experience cooking) and then try to
figure out what their cookies would be like. You can have an
interesting discussion from this type of prompt.
You'll always get a student who says that the smallest measuring unit
is the best one to use. That's when you have them measure the longest
hallway in the school using different units. One group measures it in
meters, one in centimeters, one in millimeters, one in inches, one in
yards, one in body lengths, one in strides, and one in hand spans. The
groups with the easiest measuring tasks have time to measure more than
once, to standardize their method of measuring, and to analyze how
accurate and how precise their measurements are. The groups with the
smaller and less standard units have less time because the task is so
time consuming and because they have to figure out what their unit is.
Then we put all the results on the board, analyze them together as a
class, figure out how to convert them so we can compare them, and then
try to figure out just how long the hallway really is.
The whole point of this set of exercises is to get the students
thinking about the numbers they're going to be throwing around all
year. It seems to work.
Ellen Koivisto
SOTA, San Francisco
On Thursday, June 26, 2003, at 01:24 PM, pauld@exploratorium.edu wrote:
> Hi Pinholers
>
> One of the summer teachers asked if there are any real world examples
> that can be used to motivate students about the use of significant
> figures?
>
> Got any ideas?
>
> Paul
> D
>
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