On Tuesday the 31st May, Karen, who is a worker at Xtreme Zero Waste (XZW) came to our maths class and explained how maths is a big part of XZW.
We then worked out the volume of the recycling bin and then the volume of a non-crushed can. Next, everyone estimated how many could fit in the recycling bin. After that we put this to the test to see if our calculations were correct but sadly all groups were WRONG!
We had a conversation with Karen and came to the conclusion that a cylinder shaped can and a rectangular recycling bin were not compatible, but in the end we could fit roughly 60 non-crushed cans in the bin. We decided to see how many crushed cans the rubbish bin could hold.
We put our shoes on and started stomping on cans. Once all were flattened the group that had the most crushed cans in the bin counted and it came to a total of 324 crushed cans. Our calculations were pretty close. After doing this activity, we cleaned up. Karen then explained that maths really does have a big impact in life.
On Tuesday the 14th of June we got into the school vans and drove to XZW. When we arrived we met Karen and walked over to the metal yard where we were introduced to Dusta the big metal man and Simon, who helped build it. We talked about the proportions that they considered when building Dusta.
We were then given a challenge to make a properly proportioned metal man out of the junk that was supplied to us from the metal yard. Check out some of our creations. We would like to thank Karen and XZW for accommodating us and showing us how maths can be used in the real world.
