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San Diego Math Trail
Balboa Park |
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Elementary/Intermediate:
Estimate how many people could stand in line
between the ropes.
Secondary: How would you determine
whether or not the curve of the purple ropes
is an arc of a circle? |
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Intermediate:
How many gallons of water are in this pool?
Secondary: Suppose you were asked to
determine approximately how much water evaporated
from the surface of this pool on a
particular day. How would you do it?
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Intermediate:
Find the radius of the innermost circle of
bricks and count the number of
bricks. Then find the radius to
the outermost circle of bricks and compute
the number of bricks you think it should
contain.
Intermediate/Secondary: Determine the
area of the region that is covered in
bricks. |
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Elementary/Intermediate:
Point out all of the geometric ideas that
you can see here.
Intermediate/secondary:
Determine the
slope of one of the railings.
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Intermediate:
What measurements would you make to find out
if these two bicycle racks are exactly
symmetric? |
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Intermediate/Secondary:
Compare the pattern of this root system to
the concept of a fractal. |
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Elementary/Intermediate:
What is the area of one of these leaves? |
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Elementary:
Estimate how many rocks are in this wall. |
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Elementary/Intermediate:
How could you determine the height of this
arch without measuring it directly? |
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Elementary/Intermediate:
Is the large rectangle that is carved into
the door exactly similar in shape to the
door itself?
Secondary:
Determine an equation that
describes the exact shape of one of the
spiral carvings on the columns. |
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Secondary:
The latitude of San Diego is about 33º
North. At noon on the longest day of
the year, this tower casts a shadow of 10
meters. What is the height of the tower? |
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Intermediate/Secondary:
On the umbrella, the green stripes are made
of segments that are contained in triangular
sections of the umbrella. Measure the
length of the shortest green segment and the
longest, and determine the total
length of all of the green stripes in one
umbrella.
Secondary:
If your only measuring tool
was a tape measure, how could you determine
the angle at which the top of one of these
umbrella's is bent?
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Intermediate:
Use a ruler held at arm's length, a
measuring tape and the idea of similar
triangles to determine the height of one of
these trees. |
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Elementary/Intermediate:
Determine the experimental probability that
a coin dropped onto the center of the dark tile
just below the center of this photo will end up entirely within a
light-colored tile.
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Intermediate:
How would you determine the area of glass
required for this window? |
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Intermediate/Secondary:
Suppose this bowl weighs .5
kilograms. If you were to make a
similar bowl, with twice the diameter and
depth, what do you think it would
weigh? Explain your reasoning. |
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Intermediate:
Suppose you want to know what percent of
this area is blue (or dark-colored). Try this: take 100
pennies and spread them out over the area so
that they are evenly distributed, and count
the number of pennies that are on a blue
(dark-colored) tile. Repeat this two more times, and
find the average of your answers.
Explain why
the answer you get is a good estimate of the
answer to the question.
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Secondary:
Imagine that this wall is a Cartesian
coordinate system, and the origin is at the
left corner of the rounded window.
Determine the equation of the sine function
that most closely matches the curve of the
top of the window. What is the domain
for which this function is valid? |
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Elementary/Intermediate:
What volume of soil would be required to
fill all of these pots? |
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Elementary/Intermediate:
Suppose you wanted to paint this window so
that no two adjacent squares were the same
color. How many different colors would
you have to use? |
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Secondary:
If you want the capital letters on this
sign to subtend an angle of 3 degrees when
viewed from 40 feet away, how tall should
they be? |