Math is Practical! (Thank You Mr. Smith)

I left school Friday afternoon looking forward to a first for me--winter vacation. Apparently, it is a rather common practice in the Northeast to take a week off from school in late February or early March. (This vacation is in addition to the regular Christmas break and Spring break.) So how did I decide to spend this newly found treasure? How else? I loaded the family in our "tan van" and drove to Canada!

We left shortly after school on Friday to drive through the uniquely individualistic state of Maine to the Canadian province of New Brunswick and the home of my brother-in-law and sister.

As the 7 hour drive wore on, I found myself succumbing to the weariness and fatigue of a long week. Everyone else in the van was out, so I had to become rather resourceful in finding ways to keep myself awake. (I couldn't even play the license plate game because there were very few other vehicles on the road once we got past Bangor.) I opted for something that I do often when driving long hours--math.

For some odd reason, I love to figure out different statistics about our journey while traveling. I say odd because--I am not very good at math nor do I have any particular affection for it. I have found, however, that the mental dexterity required to figure some of these equations out is just what I need to keep from falling asleep. Last night, it started like this:

I saw a sign that said 38 miles to Houlton--the last American city before the border. I wanted to find out how long it would take us to travel that distance if I had my cruise control set at exactly 70 mph. Several minutes later I had my answer--32 minutes and 47 seconds (approximately)! (Of course, by the time I figured out the answer, it was more like 27 minutes and 13 seconds!)

With that simple equation, the proverbial floodgates of mathdom were thrown open in my mind. Soon I had also figured out that a car travelling 70 mph is traveling 103 feet per second which meant that we were covering the length of a football field in under 3 seconds which also meant that I could figure out how far away a moose in the road would be if I counted the seconds from the time I saw it until the time I hit it. I figured out that two cars competing in a 100 mile race with one car traveling 70 mph and starting 10 miles behind the starting line will overtake the other car in exactly 1 hour (if the other car is traveling 60 mph), and will finish the race with the other car 5.7 miles behind! I figured out that a car traveling 70 mph and getting 20 miles per gallon will use a gallon of gas approximately every 17 minutes! I figured out that people from Maine are just plain weird and that Stephen King has plenty of inspiration for his horror novels! I figured out that I am a big geek who has an anemic view of fun, and that all of my students would make fun of me if they knew how much enjoyment I got out of solving math problems in my brain while driving through the biggest nothing of nothing east of the Mississippi!

Anyway, the conclusion of the matter is this--you know all of those "I'm never gonna use this stuff anyway!" kids in math class who complained about the work? Well, I am here to announce that they were wrong. We do use math as adults. If for nothing else, it can keep us from running our minivan into a pine tree at 103 feet per second!  Thank you to Mr. Smith--my 10th grade Algebra II teacher!

So, now I am gonna go watch some curling on TV.

Peace out...