Ferris Wheel Math

I'm having my students relate what they've learned about amplitude, period, phase shift and vertical shift to a real world scenario involving ferris wheels.  I started  by having them read chapter 15 of the book, The Joy of X which I've blogged about before.  It's a chapter about the ubiquitousness (is that a word?) of the sine curve.  It's a great read!  We then focused in on the example of the Ferris wheel that he gives in the chapter.  I started by working through the first problem on the worksheet with them.  I then turned them loose to do the card match and work the second problem.  The conversations they had and the observations they made were amazing!  And I love love love the card match - it really forces them to see the connection between the graphs, the equations, and the descriptions of the Ferris wheels.  One of the graphs doesn't have a matching equation, so they have to write that equation themselves, and two of the descriptions get used twice, which brings up a great conversation about how that can happen.  I loved this activity!

Ferris Wheel Activity

Note - I didn't realize that the problem was in meters, so on the last question you can either ask them for meters/min and km/hr or you can have them change meters to feet in the problem.  Sorry about that!

Ferris Wheel Card Match