Last Thursday, 7B took their class to the garden for a design challenge. They were given a piece of 8.5 x 11 paper and challenged to construct a rectangular prisms popcorn container with the largest volume. They had access to scissors and tape. Their container was then filled with popcorn.
There were lots of interesting ideas at the beginning:
-"All the volumes will be the same because we all have the same size piece of paper."
-"A taller container will hold more."
-"A container with the largest surface area on the bottom will be the biggest."
They went to work and as the containers were constructed and volumes calculated and recorded, they were able to refine their hypotheses. We will follow up on class this week with further analysis of their findings.