Events

On Tuesday October 21, a group of year 10 and year 8 students embarked on a “Mathematics in the City” excursion. We met at Manly, caught the ferry into town, and started our day with an exercise aimed at calculating the cost of running a car to the city every day for work. We looked at the architecture of the Opera House and also the changes in building design in the Rocks area since the time of settlement, before moving on to Darling Harbour. The students had the task of finding our way around the city throughout the day and tested their skills in reading timetables and maps.

Next

We had morning tea at Darling Harbour and tried to estimate the travelling distance in one year of the carousel. We had an interesting discussion as to whether the horses on the inside or the outside of the carousel actually travel faster. There was also a giant Connect 4 game at Darling Harbour, where Luke Grose displayed his skills in defeating Mr Muddle!

We moved onto Sydney Wildlife World, where the students had a wonderful time learning about different environments in Australia, and collected data in order to do some statistical analysis of flora and fauna species in Australia, and also some consumer arithmetic work.

We had some lunch, and calculated how much money could be spent on a holiday in Australia, and how expensive it is to eat out every day!

Our investigation concluded with a traffic survey – where we aimed to estimate the amount of traffic crossing the Sydney Harbour bridge throughout the year.

The students (and teachers!) had a wonderful day – and came home exhausted from all the exercise.
Thanks to Mrs Smithies for organising such a wonderful excursion. It was most enjoyable and a way of using mathematics in the real world.

Mr P Muddle, Mathematics Coordinator.