Sense of Scale

[Ray]

Looking at Google's News and I see " ...$2.1 Trillion ... debt ... plan", hmm that doesn't sound so bad a 2, and a dot, and a 1. Trillion. The Trillion goes down past the tongue , sure I know it's larger than a billion, but so what, no gut impact.

I do a little more surfing around the web and I come across this cool little visualization; 30,000 years = 1 Trillion seconds. Wow, felt that one, huge huge number. Teachable moment math-wise I guess.

 

What are some things that have helped you get the sense of scale to your students?

[Guest]

What a really great question. Here are some things we used:

 

How Much is a Million? and On Beyond a Million, both by David Schwartz. There's a workbook/activity book for How Much is a Million also.

 

Hottest, Coldest, Highest, Deepest by Steve Jenkins puts some numbers associated with geographical features into perspective; for instance, he puts a bunch of little Empire State Building figures on top of one another to show heights of mountains or depths of lakes, etc.

 

TOPS has a unit study called Scale the Universe, which goes into both huge and very tiny numbers. I found this one very useful. We did this alongside making a solar system to scale -- it stretched over half a mile down our street, with earth represented by a marble, I think. I got this off the internet.

 

For older logic stage kids, the book The Numbers Game by Michael Blastland (great name!) and Andrew Dilnot begins with a chapter or two on the whole concept of putting numbers into the perspective of the context, to determine what makes them "big" or "small." I read this aloud to dd.

 

For those who teach old earth, the GEMS unit on Life Through Time has a great visual where you put a geological timeline on a piece of adding paper; ours stretched across two rooms and out the door.

Edited August 2, 2011 by Guest

[swimmermom3]

When we were studying the water cycle, we took a piece of paper that was x feet long that represented all the water present in the water cycle. You marked off how much was in the atmosphere, in the oceans etc. The last item to be marked was the amount of drinkable water which came to something like a 1/4 of an inch out of several feet of paper. That was a stunner.

 

Also, today I was reminded of a very teachable moment with our oldest child who was in ps all the way through until her senior year. At some point in middle school, we had to have the discussion of what happens when you earn a 0 for not turning in a paper. We made the poor girl work out the math on figuring out how many 90%+ assignments it would take to "fix" that one zero. She had no clue. While it is not really a "scale" issue, it is a perspective issue that I think all middle schoolers and above should have an understanding of.:D

[Guest]

When we were studying the water cycle, we took a piece of paper that was x feet long that represented all the water present in the water cycle. You marked off how much was in the atmosphere, in the oceans etc. The last item to be marked was the amount of drinkable water which came to something like a 1/4 of an inch out of several feet of paper. That was a stunner.

 

 

I like this a lot. It's similar to something we did with an apple, to show the amount of arable soil in relation to earth's volume and then to its total land mass. But the apple wasn't anywhere near as visually stunning as the example you describe.

[quark]

What are some things that have helped you get the sense of scale to your students?

 

This cool cell size and scale comparison. Use the slider below to play. :)

[Guest]

This cool cell size and scale comparison. Use the slider below to play. :)

 

This is terrific! Reminded me of this:

 

http://www.kiroastro.com/writings/perspective

 

And that reminded me of the oldie but classic Powers of Ten:

 

http://www.powersof10.com

[peacefully]

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