Objectives
- Students will determine the relationship between the number of "steps" a walker takes and the time it takes to make these "steps".
- Students will apply the mathematics they know to solve problems arising in everyday life, society, and the workplace (CCSS Mathematical Practice).
- Students will use functions to model relationships between quantities (CCSS Mathematical Standard).
- Students will construct a function to model a linear relationship between two quantities (CCSS Mathematical Standard).
- Students will determine the rate of change and initial value of the function from a description of a relationship, including reading these from a table or from a graph (CCSS Mathematical Standard)
- Students will interpret the rate of change and initial value of a linear function in terms of the situation it models and in terms of its graph or a table of values (CCSS Mathematical Standard).
Vocabulary
- function
- model
- y-intercept
- slope
- table
- mean/average
- speed
- independent variable
- dependent variable
About the Lesson
This lesson involves collecting time data as a walker moves at a constant pace.
As a result, students will:
- Use a stopwatch built into the TI-Nspire document.
- Model the event with a function that best fits the time vs. step plot.
- Relate the real event of a walker moving at a constant speed to a linear function in the form of y = mx + b.
- Optional: Explore how the plot of time vs. distance varies from distance vs. time.