On December 9, 2011, Mrs. Carlson, the Calculus BC math teacher, handed her students a 50 point project called “A Sweet Way to Investigate Volume.” The class was in the process of learning how to find volumes with the use of the disk, washer, and shell methods, and Mrs. Carlson “wanted the students to come up with equations and discover and see how they could calculate volume…with real life examples.”
Mrs. Carlson pushed back the originally scheduled school curriculum and set aside December 12 to allow the students to form groups of three. Afterwards, she provided each group with a napkin, doughnut, paper ruler, and three Hershey’s kisses. The groups then worked together to find the proper equations that would give the most accurate volume of the doughnut and kisses. However, the students were not allowed to just freely create a volume. Mrs. Carlson made specific tasks; for example, task #1 was to find the volume of a Hershey’s kiss using the disk method, and task #2a was to find the volume of a doughnut using the washer method. Therefore, the members worked together to find the radius and diameter; some groups cut their doughnuts and kisses for a more accurate measurement.
The BC students were then given an extra week to complete their equations and create a board that would hold all of the necessary equations, steps, pictures, and graphs. Moreover, as many of the students were ambitious, most groups attempted the project extensions, which included calculating the volume of other foods and sweets such as a loaf of bread and a bundt cake and creating an additional digital presentation.
All of the findings for this project was presented in class on Monday, December 19th. The students then peer graded the projects one at a time on a 25 point rubric based on appearance, equations, clear descriptions, and explained assumptions.
Finally, the students were required to turn in a response with a minimum of 250 words to describe what they learned on the project.
All in all, the students found it to be a rewarding experience, and Connie Chen, a Calculus BC student, summarized, “It was hard getting started with the project and finding all the required items, such as the bundt cake…but the project came out beautifully, and I believe I learned a lot more about equations for finding volume!”
