We offer great ideas in Real World Mathematics. Let's explore the Real World and Mathematics. Many people today are concerned about our environment and our need to control our waste. We can incorporate this real life concern with the an investigation into surface area, volume, and the shape of a rectanglar solid, all very familiar concepts for middle-school students. Students will work in groups to explore surface area and volume relationships while learning about aspects of a career as a packaging engineer.
Students work with cereal boxes as a model of a rectangular solid.
They will measure and record the dimensions of a cereal box and then calculate its volume. Next, students will cut will cut open this box to form a flat network and calculate the surface area.