Calculator Activities

Tie the Knot

  1. Measure the length of your piece of rope – it doesn’t matter if you use inches or centimeters.
  2. Tie a knot anywhere on the rope and then measure it again.
  3. Record this information in the chart below.
  4. Continue to do this several times.

Number of Knots / Length of Rope
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
  1. Enter this information into your calculator in L1 and L2
  2. Graph these ordered pairs on your calculator
  3. Guess an equation that you think would fit the data and enter it into Y= and graph it. Change it as necessary.
  4. Find a regression equation for the data and enter it into Y=.
  5. Find the correlation coefficient for your regression equation.

SOLVING A SYSTEM

Solve this system by graphing.

y = 2x-4

y =-3x+6

  1. Enter the equations into Y=
  2. Graph them
  3. Zoom Standard
  4. Use Trace and Zoom to estimate the intersection
  5. Use Calc and Intersect to find the intersection

PROJECTILE MOTION

A ball is shot upwards from the top of a building 50 meters high at a velocity of 25m/s. The height at any given time can be found from this equation:

y = -4.9x2 +25x + 50

  1. Enter the equation into Y=
  2. Use WINDOW to find a suitable window to view the graph
  3. Find this information:
  4. Intersection with y-axis
  5. Maximum height reached and how long it took
  6. How long it took to hit the ground

CHOCOLATE CHIP MINING

  1. Get one cookie from Package A
  2. Count the number of chocolate chips in the cookie
  3. As a class, collect the data and record it in L1
  4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 with a cookie from Package B. Record data in L2
  5. Sort the data in each list in descending order
  6. Find statistical information for each set of data
  7. Make a Box & Whiskers graph to compare the data

GRAPHS AND CHARTS

The Greatest Integer Function rounds any number down to the next lowest integer.

It is an example of a step function (like cell phone charges)

Graph it. y = int(x) (MATH – NUM – 5:int)

  1. Use the Trace command to trace the function. Notice the calculator adds lines that are not really part of the graph.
  2. Do Zoom Box to get a better view of your graph
  3. Look at the Table associated with this graph
  4. Set up your table so it starts counting at -2 and counts by 0.1 units
  5. Go into Mode and change your view so you can see the table and the graph on the screen

Calculator Workshop October 19, 2007 Susan M. Bennett