standard_description: Interpret expressions that represent a quantity in terms of its context.
problem_activity: Activity
In this activity, students examine relationships shown in graphs. They consider different types of events that cause repeated outputs (MP2). They examine one situation which is periodic (the distance of a car from the start line as it goes around a racetrack) and two situations which are not periodic, but do rise and fall at regular intervals. The long-term goal in this unit is to develop mathematical tools which can help model these complex phenomena.
Monitor for students who connect the repetitive nature of these graphs to the context of the clock hands or Ferris wheel from earlier lessons.
Launch
Engagement: Provide Access by Recruiting Interest.
Leverage choice around perceived challenge. Invite students to select 2 of 3 to complete. Chunking this task into more manageable parts may also support students who benefit from additional processing time.
Supports accessibility for: Organization; Attention; Social-emotional skills
Student Facing
Here are some relationships that produce graphs that have a repetitive nature. For each situation, describe the dependent and independent variable. How does the dependent variable change? What might cause this change?
This is the graph of the distance of a race car from the starting line as it goes around a track.
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This is the graph of the temperature in a city in Australia over 21 days.
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This is the graph of two populations over time.
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Student Response
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Student Facing
Are you ready for more?
A ladybug is resting at the tip of a clock’s minute hand, which is 1 foot long. When it is 12:15, the ladybug is 10 feet above the ground.
Calculate how far above the ground the ladybug is at 12:00, 12:30, 12:45, and 1:00.
Estimate how far above the ground the ladybug is at 12:10, 12:20, and 12:40.
Plot the distances of the ladybug from the ground from 12:00 to 1:00.
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If the ladybug stays on the minute hand, predict how its distance from the ground will change over the next hour (from 1:00 to 2:00). What about from 2:00 to 3:00?
Student Response
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Anticipated Misconceptions
Some students may be unsure how to read the axes for all but the first relationship, as they look different than what students have seen so far. Encourage these students to focus on a specific coordinate on a graph to help them make sense of the axis labels as a way to get started.
Activity Synthesis
Begin the discussion by selecting previously identified students to share their observations about connections between the repeating nature of these graphs and the clock hands or Ferris wheel contexts from earlier lessons. If no groups make this connection, invite students to do so now—for example, by comparing the period of the race car to the period of the minute hand on a clock or by contrasting how the height of a point on a Ferris wheel always moves between the same high and low while the city high and low temperatures change from day to day.
Display the graphs for all students to see. Here are some questions for discussion:
“What similarities do you see between the graphs representing these situations?” (There are highs and lows in all the graphs, and these highs and lows come at pretty regular intervals.)
“Do these graphs all represent functions? How can you tell?” (Yes, in these situations for each time, there is a single value.)
“What do you think it means for a function to be
periodic
?” (The output values follow a repeating pattern.)
“What other words could you use to describe this type of behavior?” (repeating, cyclic)
Conclude the discussion by reminding students that previously, we named functions whose values repeat at regular intervals
periodic functions
. The graph of the race track is an example of what a periodic function can look like. The other two situations shown, temperature and population over time, are not quite periodic functions since the output values are not the same over and over again, but they have a definite periodic pattern to them.


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