Ms. Begle’s real life experience involving slope

You may only ask questions about this experience if you pay attention and

solve the math. No exceptions! SPI 3.5

One day Ms. Begle decided to go skydiving. You all know I like to

incorporate math into my everyday life. This was no exception. Here is my

skydiving plane

And here is my before pic. Yes, I asked questions such as, “At what altitude do I jump from?”, “Approximately, how long does it take

to get to the bottom?”FYI: I did this for a charity. It was called “Falling for a Cure” which raises money to help those affected by MS (multiple sclerosis).

Think of this as a qualitative graph. How would we label our x and y axis?

Time

Altit

ude

(Hei

ght)

What do you think my graph would look like? Are there variations within the classroom on what you think it would look like? Or would everyone have the exact same graph?

Note: This is not my actual plane as we were too far

up in the sky (above the clouds) to get a picture.

• How high up do you think we were when we jumped?

• If we made an x/y chart, what would be the x and what would be the y?

• How does this reference slope?

15,000 feet

X = Time, Y = Altitude (Height)

Falling over time explains rate of change.

Let’s set up our x/y chart

X (Time)

Y (Altitude/Height)

0 Minutes

5 Minutes

What was our altitude at 0 minutes? Where was I?

15,000 feet. Getting ready to jump!15,000 ft.

I knew it took exactly 5 minutes to get to the bottom. When we landed what was our altitude?

0 ft. when I reached the ground

0 ft.

How can we find out the slope as I was falling to the ground?

Who remembers the formula for slope when we have a chart?

12

12

x- x

y - ym

Let’s go back to our chart.

• How would you plug these numbers into our formula?

X (Time)

Y (Altitude/Height)

0 Minutes 15,000 ft.

5 Minutes 0 ft.12

12

x- x

y - ym

0 - 5

15,000 - 0m

Who’s got our slope? Did I fall straight down?

What kind of slope is this?

Negative

Why was the slope negative?

Because Ms. Begle’s altitude was decreasing over a period of time.

What was the slope?m = -3,000

What does a slope of -3,000 mean when we go back to our chart?

X (Time)

Y (Altitude/Height)

0 Minutes 15,000 ft.

1 Minute

2 Minutes

3 Minutes

4 Minutes

5 Minutes 0 ft.

12,000 ft.

9,000 ft.

6,000 ft.

3,000 ft.

How high up was Ms. Begle still after 1 minute?

How high up was Ms. Begle still after 2 minutes?

How high up was Ms. Begle still after 3 minutes?

How high up was Ms. Begle still after 4 minutes?

Back to the graph…what did it look like?

Altit

ude

(Hei

ght)

Time

Did Ms. Begle have a graceful landing?

• NOPE!!!!