In this activity, students determine their own eyesight and calculate what a good average eyesight value for the class would be. Students learn about technologies to enhance eyesight and how engineers play an important role in the development of these technologies.

This lesson unit is intended to help teachers assess how well students are able to visualize two-dimensional cross-sections of representations of three-dimensional objects. In particular, the lesson will help you identify and help students who have difficulties recognizing and drawing two-dimensional cross-sections at different points along a plane of a representation of a three-dimensional object.

This is a task from the Illustrative Mathematics website that is one part of a complete illustration of the standard to which it is aligned. Each task has at least one solution and some commentary that addresses important asects of the task and its potential use. Here are the first few lines of the commentary for this task: A penny is about $\frac{1}{16}$ of an inch thick. In 2011 there were approximately 5 billion pennies minted. If all of these pennies were placed in a s...

This is a task from the Illustrative Mathematics website that is one part of a complete illustration of the standard to which it is aligned. Each task has at least one solution and some commentary that addresses important asects of the task and its potential use. Here are the first few lines of the commentary for this task: A fruit salad consists of blueberries, raspberries, grapes, and cherries. The fruit salad has a total of 280 pieces of fruit. There are twice as many r...

Solve problems involving ratios and rates.

a. Create tables of equivalent ratios, find missing values in the tables and plot the pairs of values on the Cartesian coordinate plane.
b. Solve unit rate problems.

This is a task from the Illustrative Mathematics website that is one part of a complete illustration of the standard to which it is aligned. Each task has at least one solution and some commentary that addresses important aspects of the task and its potential use.

This is a task from the Illustrative Mathematics website that is one part of a complete illustration of the standard to which it is aligned. Each task has at least one solution and some commentary that addresses important aspects of the task and its potential use.

This is a task from the Illustrative Mathematics website that is one part of a complete illustration of the standard to which it is aligned. Each task has at least one solution and some commentary that addresses important asects of the task and its potential use. Here are the first few lines of the commentary for this task: Lin rode a bike 20 miles in 150 minutes. If she rode at a constant speed, How far did she ride in 15 minutes? How long did it take her to ride 6 miles?...

Ratio errors confuse a dodgeball coach as two teams face off in an epic tournament. See how mathematical techniques such as tables, graphs, measurements and equations help to find the missing part of a proportion.

True love has the right ratio. In this humorous animation, the number of words spoken by each partner predicts whether a date goes well or horribly. What do you do when someone asks if you listen to country music backwards, but won't let you get a word in edgewise?

Bianca visits a bike shop and learns how bicycle gears work in this Cyberchase video segment.

In this video segment from Cyberchase, the CyberSquad and Digit construct a physical profile of the person who kidnapped Choocroca, a giant cybercrocodile.

This task provides an opportunity to work on the Standard for Mathematical Practice 3 Construct Viable Arguments and Critique the Reasoning of Others.

How many calories are in your favorite foods? How much exercise would you have to do to burn off these calories? What is the relationship between calories and weight? Explore these issues by choosing diet and exercise and keeping an eye on your weight.

Math in Real Life (MiRL) supports the expansion of regional networks to create an environment of innovation in math teaching and learning.  The focus on applied mathematics supports the natural interconnectedness of math to other disciplines while infusing relevance for students.  MiRL supports a limited number of networked math learning communities that focus on developing and testing applied problems in mathematics.  The networks help math teachers refine innovative teaching strategies with the guidance of regional partners and the Oregon Department of Education.

The CyberSquad tests which broom can travel the furthest in five seconds in this video from Cyberchase.

This series of 5 word problems lead up to the final problem. Most students should be able to answer the first two questions without too much difficulty. The decimal numbers may cause some students trouble, but if they make a drawing of the road that the girls are riding on, and their positions at the different times, it may help. The third question has a bit of a challenge in that students won't land on the exact meeting time by making a table with distance values every hour. The fourth question addresses a useful concept for problems involving objects moving at different speeds which may be new to sixth grade students.

Students are introduced to gear transmissions and gear ratios using LEGO MINDSTORMS(TM) NXT robots, gears and software. They discover how gears work and how they can be used to adjust a vehicle's power. Specifically, they learn how to build the transmission part of a vehicle by designing gear trains with different gear ratios. Students quickly recognize that some tasks require vehicle speed while others are more suited for vehicle power. They are introduced to torque, which is a twisting force, and to speed the two traits of all rotating engines, including mobile robots using gears, bicycles and automobiles. Once students learn the principles behind gear ratios, they are put to the test in two simple design activities that illustrate the mechanical advantages of gear ratios. The "robot race" is better suited for a quicker robot while the "robot push" calls for a more powerful robot. A worksheet and post-activity quiz verify that students understand the concepts, including the tradeoff between torque and speed.