More Ideas on the Slope connection!
Slippery Slopes! How does the slope of a ski path affect the swiftness of the skier?
In my hands-on activity, students design ski paths that are as easygoing as possible without causing the skier to slow down. Students learn more if they associate real-life meaning to situations represented graphically. In this activity, students investigate various changes in the slope of a ski trail, then graph these linear functions and analyze the results. The slope of a line is a ratio of rise to run, and is a number that measures its "steepness", or rate of change, usually denoted by the letter m. On a coordinate graph, slope is the change in the y direction for a unit change in the x direction along a given line.