Date: Mon Oct 14 06:17:22 PDT 2002
Student's Name: Sara
Answer(or question to Mentor): Hey!!
This is Sara with my answer to the problem of the week. I think the answer is 6.4 of a mile. I already knew that it takes 5 seconds for the thunder to travel 1 mile, so what I did was divide 30 of the 32 miles by the 5 seconds. That gave me the 6 part of the answer and then I had 2 seconds left so I made that a fraction which would be 2/5 of a mile. Just recently in math we have been changing decimals to fractions and fractions to decimals. So I made 2/5 the fraction 40/100 then since the second place of a decimal like this-.00 is hundredths and so the fraction 40/100 would be .40 or .4
Talk to ya later!!!
Sara Fisher
Date: Thu Oct 17 18:15:26 PDT 2002
Student's Name: Sara
Mentor Reply: Hi Sara,
Good job in explaining your answer. You labeled your answer 6.4 of a mile. Remember that 6.4 "of a mile" means something different than 6.4 miles. You also referred to the 2 as "seconds left"; however you did say that 2/5 represents part of a mile. Labels are really important to consider when answering word problems because they can change the entire meaning of your answer but I'm pretty confident that you understood what the problem was asking. I really like how you changed your answer of 6 2/5 into the decimal 6.4. It's helpful to know how to convert fractions to decimals and vice/versa. Since you got the answer correct to this first problem can you try answering the challenge problem? Keep up the good work.
Sincerely, Andrea
Date: Fri Oct 18 06:09:18 PDT 2002
Student's Name: Sara
Answer(or question to Mentor): Hey this is Sara agian!!
Can you try to send this again it says that you sent me a message, but I can't read it!! It is not showing up on the screen.
Thanks!!!!
Sara Fisher
Date: Fri Oct 18 14:04:09 PDT 2002
Student's Name: Sara
Instructor Comments: Andrea,
A *FABULOUS* response. Great job. Send as is, and ignore Sara's second message. What apprently happened is that the teacher showed the students the mentor responses using the admin login instead of waiting for us to send them directly.
Dr. B
Date: Mon Oct 21 11:44:02 PDT 2002
Student's Name: Sara
Mentor Reply: Sara
Congratulations! Your answer is correct and you did a good job of explaining your solution. In particular, I really like how you changed your answer of 6 2/5 into the decimal 6.4. It's helpful to know how to convert fractions to decimals and vice/versa, and so I was glad to hear that you had recently studied this in math class.
Since you got the answer correct to this first problem can you try answering the challenge problem? Keep up the good work.
Sincerely, Andrea
Date: Tue Oct 22 06:29:41 PDT 2002
Student's Name: Sara
Answer(or question to Mentor): Hey Andrea!!
This is Sara. I got your response!! I have been working on the challenge problems and I can tell you the answer to a couple of things.
I don’t really get the first challenge problem I don’t know what to do to get to the answer.
I worked on the second one though. Here are the answers I got-
2A-6,000 strikes per minute
2B-360,000 strikes per hour
2C-8,640,000 strikes per day
2D-60,480,000 strike per week
2E- I think for this one it would depend on what month you are talking about
2D- I haven’t figured this one out
For 2A I already knew that lightning strikes 100 times every second so I multiplied that by the 60 seconds that are in a minute then I got the answer. For 2B I already knew that lightning strikes 6,000 times per minute so I multiplied that by the 60 seconds that are in an hour. Hey it is time for my class to go to out next class so if it is o.k. with you I will finish this tonight for homework.
Thanks!!
Sara
Date: Wed Oct 23 16:51:51 PDT 2002
Student's Name: Sara
Answer(or question to Mentor): Hey it is me sara again.
I made a mistake on my last message I just noticed that after 2E(the one that depends on the month) I am pretty sure that one is supposed to be 2F, just so I don't confuse you.
I am going to tell you how I got the rest of the challenge problems.
For 2C I got the answer 8,640,000. How I got this was I already knew that lightning strikes 360,000 times per hour so I just multiplied that by the 24 hours in a day and then I got my answer. For 2D I already knew that lightning strikes 8,640,000 times a day and I knew that there were 7 days in a week so I just multiplied the 8,640,00 lightning strikes in a day by the 7 days in week then i got my answer. For 2E like I said it would depend on the month. For 2F I was going to wait till I figured out some month to do so I would not have to multiply the number of lightning strikes per day by the 365 days in a year, but today is my last day to respond to you.
Thanx a ton!!
Sara
Date: Wed Oct 23 23:52:41 PDT 2002
Student's Name: Sara
Mentor Reply: Hi Sara,
You are on the right track. The answers you gave for parts 2a through 2d are correct. Part 2e of the challenge (the one asking strikes/month is kind of a trick question! You are right, this answer would depend on the number of days in any particular month. For the last part, 2f, I multiplied the number of lightning strikes per day with 365 so this would be 8640000 x 365.
As for the first part of the challenge problem you would first have to find out how many feet are in a mile (maybe in a dictionary or back of a math book). There are 5280 feet in a mile so if sound travels 1 mile every 5 seconds, then 5280 divided by 5 would equal 1056 feet. Expressed in ft per second, sound travels 1056 feet per second. If you have any questions let me know. I applaud your great work!
Sincerely, Andrea
