My students then spent a little time working through some surface area of prisms and cylinder questions. They had to do some unit conversions along the way. I like to incorporate these where it makes sense along the way, not do conversions for the sake of doing conversions (they are in the 2P curriculum).
Next, spaghetti bridges. I actually chose to use spaghettini instead as it breaks a little more easily. Spaghetti is remarkably strong! Students were randomly grouped into teams of three. They made "bridges" by holding the ends of the spaghettini through which they had threaded a small Dixie cup. I had already holepunched the cups for them.
Once they have collected their data they plot it by hand first and then using a graphing calculator. It's not the "cleanest" data so they will likely use the calculators to get the equation of the line of best fit. They didn't get that far today, so they will continue tomorrow.
I would strongly recommend that you have a broom in the room if you do this activity as it gets a little messy with broken spaghettini all over the floor. In my experience some students like to sweep up and are more than happy to pitch in.
Here are the handouts: spaghetti bridges, spaghettini bridges and the extension with credit to Alex Overwijk.
To be continued tomorrow...