Three Act Math Task

Act 1: Questions that pre-service teachers (elementary teacher education majors) wondered about:

• How many pennies were spilled?

• How long did it take to clean up the pennies?

• How many pennies were in the truck?

• How many pennies in all?

• How much would all of those pennies be worth?

• How many pounds of pennies were spilled?

• (I told them that I normally take 20 minutes to drive to work, but it took me just over an hour to get to campus that day.) What was the average speed that Dr. Jansen drove?

• How much surface area did the pennies cover?

• What would be an efficient method to count such a large quantity of coins?

• At what angle did the truck hit the barrier?

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[Have the students estimate their answers to their question! It's fun! They get excited... This evokes more curiosity.]

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Act 2: The pre-service teachers wanted to know...

• How much did the truck weigh before and after the spill?

• What was the weight of the pennies that spilled?

• What was the weight of one penny?

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Act 3: Some of the solution paths that the pre-service teachers took through the problem...

• Given the number of grams in one pound and the weight of one penny in grams, find the number of pennies per pound. Then use that amount with the total number of pounds spilled to find the amount of pennies that were spilled (convert cents to dollars).

• Given the total number of pounds and given the number of grams per pound, find the total number of grams that were spilled. Then use the weight of a penny in grams to find the amount of pennies that were spilled.

• Given the number of grams per pound and the weight of one penny in grams, find how much a penny weighs in pounds. If you know the weight of a penny in pounds and the number of pounds that spilled, you can find the number of pennies spilled.