Monday, October 31, 2005

Ms. Frizzle's Commute

Ms. Frizzle woke up at 5:30 am, long before sunrise. She got dressed, ate breakfast, and put on her coat, and walked down the stairs to the door of her building. She left her building at 6:30 am, and walked 0.5 km to the bus stop. It took her 6 minutes to walk to the bus stop, but as soon as she got there, she realized she left the sixth grade science homework on her kitchen table! She turned around and ran back to her house, getting there in only 4 minutes. She grabbed the papers and ran back to the bus stop in another 4 minutes. Unfortunately, she just missed the bus, so she waited at the bus stop for 8 minutes, listening to music in her walkman.

Luckily, the bus that came was an express bus and only stopped once between her house and the Union Square train station. The stop was 4 kilometers from where she got on, and the bus took 8 minutes to get there. Lots of people needed to get on and off, so it was stopped for 5 minutes. Then it took another 10 minutes to go the remaining 5 kilometers to Union Square.

In Union Square, Ms. Frizzle waited on the platform for 15 minutes for her train. When it finally came, she got on and read a book during the train ride. The train stopped three times during the trip. Each time, it stopped for 3 minutes to let people on. Each stop was 5 kilometers after the previous stop, and the train took 5 minutes to get from one stop to the next.

Finally, the subway arrived at her stop in the Bronx, and Ms. Frizzle got off. She decided to take a cab to work. The cab took 12 minutes to drive her the remaining 4 kilometers to school.

Your task: I will hand out graph paper for question 1. Answer the remaining questions on looseleaf in complete sentences. Show your work whenever possible.
1. Make a distance-time graph showing Ms. Frizzle's commute to work.
2. What form of transportation went the fastest (walking, bus, train, cab)? Show your work.
3. What was Ms. Frizzle's average speed for this trip?
4. When was Ms. Frizzle's instantaneous speed the fastest?
5. When was her instantaneous speed the slowest (don’t count times when she was not moving!).
6. Did Ms. Frizzle arrive at school on time?

*****

Edible Race Cars: I wish I'd found this before we started this unit!

2 Comments:

Blogger jonathan said...

Cool worksheet. Did you make it up?

I make my 9th graders make them up, using their own journey home data. (introduces graphing and slope in the Spring).

9:47 PM  
Blogger ms. v. said...

Yup, it's a very idealized version of my real commute. I simplified the number of stops on bus/train, etc.

I was going to do a project called "Home From School," which sounds pretty much exactly like what you describe, but upon further thought, I decided it was a little ambitious for early-sixth. And collecting the data would be tricky given that many of the kids don't have watches, etc. And our kids get jumped fairly regularly on their way home, and I don't need to make them even greater targets by having them collecting science data while they travel!

10:09 PM  

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