That's when I introduced the rice problem and explained that they boy had probably heard of this problem as well. So, we started to figure out just how much he would get if the pennies doubled on each square. The students, armed with pencil, paper and calculators quickly set to work. They probably would have finished the problem (they were pretty into it) but this was just supposed to be a warm up, so I broke out a spreadsheet to quickly calculate.
- I used this slideshow to control the presentation of the comic.
- Again, the students were shocked at how quickly the pennies increased. Since it was my advanced class, we discussed what the graph of the relationship would look like and the resulting exponential equation.
- The students were using calculators to explore the problem and some got to the scientific notation form quicker than others. This was the point that I decided to use the spreadsheet for all to see.
- When the last panel is finally revealed, students inevitably want to know where in the world the $1.27 came from...I let them figure it out.