Hopewell Rocks

Yesterday, Mr.Max left class for a little while, so we had time to do our homework. Upon his return, we started to correct our homework; which is displayed below.

The first question asks: "what is the period of this ferris wheel?"

Using the formula period = 2╥/b, in this case it is:

Period = 2╥/0.523

if you put this into your calculator, then you will get 12.01. Do not round it off to 12, because Senior 4 Applied has to be accurate to 2 decimal places.

The second question asks: "What does that mean (in this question)"

This simply means that Michelle's ferris wheel makes one complete revolution (rotation, spin, turn, go around) in 12.01 minutes.

The third question asks: "After 4 minutes, how high is a person on the wheel? (State ANY assumptions"

There are many different answers you could have for this question, but you will only get marks if you show what you were thinking, or any assumptions you make that would change the answer

Some people may assume that you get on the ferris wheel at its lowest point, some may assume that you get on the ferris wheel when the graph line crosses the y-axis, along with many other assumptions.

The mathematically correct answer is 4.94, but if you assume otherwise, then the answer will change correspondingly.

And finally the last question states, "make the ferris wheel more fun (faster)" This can be done by changing x, Mr.Max will not accept an answer like:

y=22sin(100000000000x-3.14)+24

This is unrealistic because if you were going that fast you would be thrown of from the insane amount G-force

You could make it something like:

y=22sin(10x-3.14)+24

We then started Sinusoidal Regression

We went to this web site here, and found a prediction for the Hopewell Rocks

You can load this data into your calculator,

STAT, enter,


Then hit STAT, over to CALC, up one to SinReg, enter, L1, L2, (unless you put them in different columns) Y1,


(Y1 is found by hitting VARS, over to Y-VARS, enter, enter)


it then displays a,b,c, and d


Then we looked up Hopewell Rocks on Google Earth, and that was the end of math that day because we just kept looking up different places like, Mr.Max's brother's house in Calgary, a picnic table, that Mr.Max had supper on. Also looking at people that were walking on the sidewalk, or driving there cars.


I thought it was quite incredible how humans have made such remarkable technology, so sufisticaed, that you can see people walking from space. I think it would be cool if it were live video... but you would need a pretty crazy computer probably.



Also, this is completely random, but a boy shot a boar, (a male wild pig) with a pistol a little while ago in Alabama, it was over 1,000 pounds, and 9 feet 4 inches long!! Click here to see a web site about it.




Well, thats it, have a nice day!