Collapse Zone - Real Life, Hands-On Fractions
Because knocking stuff over is fun. As part of this task, students had to build different size buildings and make them collapse. Then, they had to measure the distance between the building and the furthest piece of 'debris,'
Students recorded data in their math notebooks. We compared all of the data looking for relationships between the dimensions of the building and how far the debris flies.
Students found that the strongest relationship was between the height of the building and how far the debris flew. They decided that a safe distance for the collapse zone would be 2 1/2 times the height of the building.
Then, they used their formula for the collapse zone to find the safe distance for a 45 ft. tall building which would be 112 1/2 feet away. Finally, students compared their collapse zone to that of North Carolina, which is 1 1/2 times the height of the building.
