How fast is water decreasing?

Students will be working in groups to find the relationship between weight of water versus the time water drains completely from the funnel.

In this activity, students will work in small groups to collect data, and based on the data points, they will interpret the slope of the line. Students will model the weight of water versus time data for a draining funnel. In addition, another objective that students will cover is that they will be able to describe the data using the concepts of intercept and slope of a linear function.

 

This activity is aligned with:

• CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.HSS.ID.B.5 Summarize categorical data for two categories in two-way frequency tables. Interpret relative frequencies in the context of the data (including joint, marginal, and conditional relative frequencies). Recognize possible associations and trends in the data.
• CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.HSS.ID.B.6.A Fit a function to the data; use functions fitted to data to solve problems in the context of the data. Use given functions or choose a function suggested by the context. Emphasize linear, quadratic, and exponential models.
• CCSS.MATH.PRACTICE.MP1: Making sense of problems and persevere in solving them.

Knowing the general equation of point-slope form of a line, students will write the equation of the line fitting the data collected. They will record the y-intercept in the data table. With their graphing calculators, students will determine if the line is the best fit for their data, and explain their reasoning if the line passes through any particular points.

How fast is water decreasing? Activity how-fast-is-h2o-decreasing