Just a quick reminder for those 7th Graders out there who might be reading…
Your Data Project is due on Tuesday, February 9, 2010! That means you only have two more class periods to work on it at school!
Parents, if you are reading this and HAVE NO CLUE what I am talking about, see the following document … that should give you an idea…
This is what I woke up to this morning to drive my bus. I think this is the coldest weather I have ever been in. Keep in mind that I grew up in Florida!
I began to wonder, what the coldest weather on record was for the state of Arkansas. So, I went to my friend, Google! This is what I found…
| State | Record High |
Date | Place | Record Low |
Date | Place |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alabama | 112°F 44°C |
Sept. 5, 1925 | Centerville, Al. | -27°F -33°C |
Jan. 30, 1966 | New Market |
| Alaska | 100°F 38°C |
June 27, 1915 | Fort Yukon, Ak. | -80°F -62.2°C |
Jan. 23, 1971 | Prospect Creek |
| Arizona | 128°F 53°C |
June 29, 1994* | Lake Havasu City | -40°F -40°C |
Jan. 7, 1971 | Hawley Lake |
| Arkansas | 120°F 49°C |
Aug. 10, 1936 | Ozark, Ar. | -29°F -34°C |
Feb. 13, 1905 | Pond, Ar. |
*you can find the rest of the data here.
WOW! I thought it was cold this morning!
By the way, in case you were wondering, Alaska had the lowest (-80°F) and California had the highest (134°F). The coldest my home state ever got was -2°F (which is the second highest low, if that makes any sense).
Reuters reports about the freezing temperatures, even in Florida, and how it is effecting citrus farmers…
I hope everyone has a safe weekend!
The following is a recording of David Feinberg’s Poem, Square Root 3. Savanna memorized the poem to recite for the class.
I’m sure that I will always be
A lonely number like root three
The three is all that’s good and right,
Why must my three keep out of sight
Beneath the vicious square root sign,
I wish instead I were a nine
For nine could thwart this evil trick,
with just some quick arithmetic
I know I’ll never see the sun, as 1.7321
Such is my reality, a sad irrationality
When hark! What is this I see,
Another square root of a three
As quietly co-waltzing by,
Together now we multiply
To form a number we prefer,
Rejoicing as an integer
We break free from our mortal bonds
With the wave of magic wands
Our square root signs become unglued
Your love for me has been renewed
This morning I participated in a vide0 interview by several students for a project about Christmas traditions. (Watch out, here comes the next viral youtube video!)
It got me thinking…
This is such a fun time of year! Winter is coming. A break from school is anticipated. And, then there is Christmas. One of the most universal figures this time of year (at least in this country) is Santa Claus. The real Saint Nick is also known as Nicholas the Wonderworker, or Nicholas of Myra, a saint and Bishop of Myra. He had a reputation for secret gift-giving, such as putting coins in the shoes of those who left them out for him, and thus became the model for Santa Claus (Wikipedia).
The following article was borrowed from the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) in an Article titled The Mathematics of Christmas
Devlin’s Angle
December 2000The Mathematics of Christmas
I guess it was an early sign that I was heading for a career in mathematics that, when I was a young child, the run-up to Christmas always presented me with a numerical puzzle. How could Santa Claus possibly visit all children at midnight on the same night? I never did get a satisfactory answer from my parents, whose stock response was “No one knows; he just does.”
These days, the adult me can address the question in a mathematically more sophisticated way. Just how big is the task facing Santa on Christmas Eve?
Let’s assume that Santa only visits those who are children in the eyes of the law, that is, those under the age of 18. There are roughly 2 billion such individuals in the world. However, Santa started his annual activities long before diversity and equal opportunity became issues, so we will not consider those who do not celebrate Christmas. That reduces his workload significantly to a mere 15% of the total, namely 378 million. However, the crucial figure is not the number of children but the number of homes Santa has to visit. According to the most recent census data, the average size of a family in the world is 3.5 children per household. Thus, Santa has to visit 108,000,000 individual homes. (Of course, as everyone knows, Santa only visits good children, but we can surely assume that, on an average, at least one child of the 3.5 in each home meets that criterion.)
That’s quite a challenge. However, by traveling east to west, Santa can take advantage of the different time zones, and that gives him 24 hours. Santa can complete the job if he averages 1250 household visits per second. In other words, for each household with at least one good child, Santa has 1/1250th of a second to park his sleigh, dismount, slide down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, consume the cookies and milk that have been left out for him, climb back up the chimney, get back onto the sleigh, and move on to the next house. To keep the math simple, let’s assume that these 108 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth. That means Santa is faced with a mean distance between households of around 0.75 miles, and the total distance Santa must travel is just over 75 million miles. Hence Santa’s sleigh must be moving at 650 miles per second — 3,000 times the speed of sound. A typical reindeer can run at most 15 miles per hour. That’s quite a feat Santa performs each year.
What happens when we take into account the payload on the sleigh? Assuming that the average weight of presents Santa delivers to each child is 2 pounds, the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons — and that’s not counting Santa himself, who, judging by all those familiar pictures, is no lightweight. On land, a reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Of course, Santa’s reindeer can fly. (True, no known species of reindeer can fly. However, biologists estimate that there are some 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, we cannot rule out flying reindeer.) Now, there is a dearth of reliable data on flying reindeer, but let’s assume that a good specimen can pull ten times as much as a normal reindeer. This means that Santa needs 214,200 reindeer. Thus, the total weight of this airborne transportation system is in excess of 350,000 tons, which is roughly four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.
Now, 350,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance, and this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth’s atmosphere. The two reindeer in the lead pair will each absorb some 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second. In the absence of a NASA-designed heat shield, this will cause them to burst into flames spontaneously, exposing the pair behind them. The result will be a rapid series of deafening sonic booms, as the entire reindeer team is vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Meanwhile, Santa himself will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500 times greater than gravity. That should do wonders for his waistline.
Christmas is indeed a magical time.
One of the questions the students asked me was, “Do you still believe in Santa Claus?” My answer, might have shocked them. It was a resounding, “YES!” Every year, for as long as I can remember until I left home, and sometimes even when I return home for the holiday season, Christmas morning was the same. We woke up, went into my parents room, and waited for my dad to go to the living room to see if Santa had stopped by. Every year, to this day, he would return with the sad news that he must have had some mistake, because there were a bunch of barbies in the living room. He would then spend what seemed like forever getting ready, finding the camera to take pictures that never got developed (this was B.D [before digital] time), and finally, he would call us one, by one, to the living room to discover our barbie houses!
At the time, I thought it was corny, but one day, if Jenny and I have children I will probably do the same!
At one point, some children at school began to declare that “Santa is not real.” I can still remember that cold, December night that my dad called me into the shed behind our house and had the conversation. Near its conclusion, he asked me what I believed. I told him that I wasn’t sure. He said, “Son, the day you believe Santa is not real, is the day he stops being real.” From that point on, I have always believed in Jolly Ole’ Saint Nick. I am still not sure how he makes his yearly trip around the world and back without burning up from the 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second, but he does it every year, successfully, I might add!
Christmas is indeed a magical time.
By the way, in case you were wondering, my dad was only kidding about the barbies!
7th Graders have been working on plotting points and graphing functions. To introduce the idea students were to create a picture out of points on a coordinate plane and list the ordered pairs.
This is far more than a mere coloring exercise! Students had to plan, design, and implement their vision of 100+ dots on the coordinate plane. Plotting ordered pairs is a very simple idea, but an important one when it comes to making charts and graphing lines.
Kaleb, Jonathan, Ty, and Nathan went above and beyond with their vision!
Way to go, guys!
Kaleb (5th Period)
Jonathan (4th Period)
Ty (5th Period)
Nathan (5th Period)
We have had a very wet year! In fact, as of 9:00 AM this morning, according to KATV:
We are now only .72′ ‘ away from breaking into the top 10 wettest years on record. This will more than likely happen sometime today.
How does that compare to what we have seen this year? I am glad you asked!
You will notice that most of Arkansas is in the red…which means we have had between 60 and 80 inches this year…That is between 5 and 6.6 feet! That is more rain than most of us are tall! WOW!
It does not appear to be letting up any time soon, either. Lets take a look at the immediate forecast:
This is a problem! Mrs. Rohnda told me the other day that she heard on the radio, that there has only been one nine day streak this year where we have not had rain! That means that the ground has not had much time to dry out.
The National Weather Service issued the following statement yesterday:
… PREPARATIONS TO PROTECT LIFE AND PROPERTY SHOULD BE COMPLETED AS SOON AS POSSIBLE…
SEVERAL UPPER LEVEL SYSTEMS WILL MOVE THROUGH THE REGION OUT AHEAD OF AN APPROACHING SLOW-MOVING FRONTAL BOUNDARY. THE SYSTEMS WILL INTERACT WITH THE SLOW FRONT… AND THIS WILL ALLOW FOR SEVERAL WAVES OF MODERATE TO HEAVY RAINFALL TO OCCUR ACROSS A LARGE PART OF ARKANSAS TODAY THROUGH FRIDAY NIGHT.FOR THIS REASON… A FLASH FLOOD WATCH HAS BEEN ISSUED FOR A LARGE PART OF ARKANSAS THIS AFTERNOON THROUGH SATURDAY MORNING.
AS MUCH AS 5 TO 7 INCHES OF RAIN IS EXPECTED IN PORTIONS OF CENTRAL AND SOUTHERN ARKANSAS TODAY THROUGH LATE FRIDAY NIGHT. THE HEAVIEST RAIN WILL OCCUR IN AREAS MAINLY ALONG A LINE FROM SALEM… TO LITTLE ROCK… TO CAMDEN. IN AREAS EAST AND WEST OF THIS LINE… AMOUNTS OF 3 TO 5 INCHES WILL BE COMMON… WITH ISOLATED TOTALS APPROACHING 6 INCHES.
NEAR-RECORD RAIN HAS FALLEN DURING THE MONTH OF OCTOBER IN A LARGE PART OF ARKANSAS. THERE HAS BEEN VERY LITTLE TIME FOR ANY SIGNIFICANT DRYING… WITH THE GROUND SO SATURATED. MANY STREAMS… CREEKS… AND RIVERS ARE ABOVE NORMAL LEVELS FOR LATE OCTOBER… WITH SEVERAL POINTS ALONG THE WHITE… CACHE AND OUACHITA RIVERS ABOVE FLOOD STAGE. THERE WILL SIMPLY BE NOWHERE FOR THE WATER TO GO.
WITH ALL THE EXPECTED RAINFALL… AGRICULTURAL IMPACTS WILL BE LIKELY. MANY LOW-LYING ROADS WILL BE FLOODED… AND LOW WATER CROSSINGS WILL BE IMPASSABLE. STREAMS THAT HAVE A TENDENCY TO RISE RAPIDLY DURING PERIODS OF HEAVY RAINFALL WILL TEND TO FLOOD THE QUICKEST. ANYONE CAMPING ALONG THE BANKS OF A STREAM OR RIVER… PARTICULARLY IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN ARKANSAS SHOULD MAKE PLANS TO LEAVE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE OR AT LEAST MOVE TO HIGHER GROUND.
COMMUTERS DURING THE EVENING DRIVE ON TODAY AND THE MORNING DRIVE FRIDAY SHOULD BE ESPECIALLY CAUTIOUS. IF YOU DRIVE ACROSS AREAS NEAR BODIES OF WATER SUSCEPTIBLE TO FLOODING… MAKE PLANS FOR AN ALTERNATE ROUTE.
PLEASE STAY INFORMED BY MONITORING THE LATEST FORECASTS AND INFORMATION FROM YOUR LOCAL NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE. BE PREPARED TO TAKE ACTION IF A WARNING IS ISSUED… YOUR LIFE MAY DEPEND ON IT.
This is bad news for people living in low lying areas such as Augusts, Arkansas, which is along the White River.
Keep in mind that Flood Stage for this location is 26 feet. Notice that they are already above flood stage and beginning to rise! This is bad news for land owners and farmers…but good news for duck hunters.
Have a safe and (not so) dry Halloween!
Previous screen shots taken from NOAA.
See who voted for what HERE!
Make an informed decision and check out the team stats :
UPDATE:
Congrats to Dustin H. in 4th period! His prediction was the closest! He is the proud bearer of a $5 My Sonic Card!
Design based on Cutline by Chris Pearson and original header by Thomas Hawk. Hosted by Edublogs.
