YAMQ

[manlymatt83]

My friend asked me to post the following for her:


----snip----
I am having trouble with a project on relating fuctions to real life situations.

"Choose three data-gathering situations that you can research or record personally. Two of these should be situations whose data represents functions. The third sitations should not represent a function"

I'm not sure where to start or what I should be looking for in my examples, or where to create my data.
Any suggestions?
----snip----

 

[Semidevil]

just find some kind of equation online, like a differential equation that represents something, like the heat transfer equation or whatever and have her plug and chug different numbers for different times.

 

[DrPizza]

Simple: have her do some simple physics experiments. Allow a ball to freely roll down a hill and measure distance vs. time. You'll end up with a parabolic shaped curve.

Measure the time it takes an object to fall from different heights. (another parabolic shape)

That's two simple ideas... you can find more involved types of relationships if you look.

 

[EvilYoda]

I read that over really quickly, but I vote for a bowl of jello that you can measure various heights of points and approximate an area under the curve. function, riemann-sum, etc.

Yes, I'm eating jello.