Raimy Sporl
All School “Will It Hold?” My question came off as an easy problem, but a lengthy one at that. I decided when first starting this project, that I really wanted to see everything in a different light that the rest of my classmates, While most looked at this challenge as a opportunity for a speed vs time problem, or perhaps a velocity equation, I decided to go back to the roots of what we learned a long time ago. This being fractions, division, and a lot of critical thinking. The problem I created takes quite some time to solve, but that’s the beauty of it. It comes off as a word problem, but in reality it’s like a puzzle you have to solve; and those are some of the funnest problems in my opinion. A math question shouldn’t just look like a jumble of letters and numbers, it should be a puzzle for your brain to solve and stretch around. In my problem, the framework was based around the idea that you cannot solve something until you have solved this thing first. I looked at this problem like a rope that was tangled up, and it is your job to untangle it. You can’t just instantly pull it apart (like some math problems), you have to take apart and figure out each layer of the knot before you can keep unraveling it. To find the car’s weight you had to know the truck’s weight, to know the truck’s weight you had to know a dog’s weight, and the list goes on and on. The only thing the problem solver knew for sure is that a bird weighs one pound, and a human weighs 140, that was a beginning to a world of pain. After looking back and reflecting on what I had completed, I was rather proud on the total outcome of the problem and my poster. I think my problem stood out among many others due to the fact that there was not just a single equation to solve the problem. Although others did have steps, like a puzzle, to solve the problem, it was very much based around speeds, velocity, time, and so on. In the end, my final piece came together just the way it needed to. Each poster in the hall balanced the one next to it, creating a lovely exhibition and an even lovelier final product. Although there are many things I am proud of, there are also a few things I would want to change. Seeing that we only had a week or so to work on this, I believe that I could have expanded my problem. In the beginning, the problem solver had no clue the amount of one object (car, person, dog, etc.) was on the bridge. I left them as variables that you would have to solve later on after fining out the weights of each object. However, I decided to change this factor due to the fact that it would have made the problem more confusing. Now that I look back, I think that adding more variables could have made my problem even deeper, making it an even more complex puzzle. On my own time, I think I will rewrite my problem but with variables to see how much harder or more confusing it would be. |