Both math and earth science educators may be interested in Explosion Math, a lesson plan provided by Science Friday's Educator Collaborative (featured in the 10-13-2017 Scout Report). In this standards-aligned lesson, which was written for middle and high school students, learners are challenged "to answer the age-old question of who would win between an Olympic sprinter, tortoise, car, you, and a volcano." Here, students use the slope-intercept form to calculate how much of a head start each subject would need to escape from two different volcanoes, Kilauea in Hawai'i and Fuego in Guatemala, both of which erupted in 2018. Along the way, students learn about (or review) the differences between shield and stratovolcanoes and their respective types of flows and reflect on the real-world implications of this scenario. This lesson is designed to take one to two hours to complete and includes multiple illustrative images and GIFs, as well as downloadable handouts and slides. Explosion Math was written by Brian Soash, Science Friday's Educator Community Leader and a former middle school math and science teacher.
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