Calculating interest on a savings account introduces you to another common nonlinear pattern. Drawing graphs to model events in a story and writing stories that match the information in graphs give you practice understanding and interpreting graphs of linear and nonlinear relationship. Linear Models Students conduct an experiment to investigate the relationship between the thickness and the strength of a bridge. More Nonlinear Models Students meet another type of graph model in this investigation. The patterns is exponential growth and expoential decay relationships are characteristic of many common situations and can be recognized from their graphs.
Students first analyze the growth of an investment over time.
Then, they conduct another experiment, pouring water from one glass into another so that each successive glass contain half as much water as the previous glass. They look at the relationship between the number of the glass in the series and the amount of water it contains. In previous investigations, students have collected data from experiments or generated data from descriptions of familiar situations. They have made tables, graph models, and equation models to fit data. In this investigation, they concentrate on working with and interpreting graph models, describing situations that could fit given models or creating graphs to fit a variety of real world situations.