Friday, January 25, 2013

What’s in a Name?


As the relaunch of our Cardin literary magazine approaches—this time reimagined as an online magazine, to allow for more variety of content—we once again had to face the problem of deciding on a name for the magazine.

Doesn’t seem like a serious dilemma, does it?  All we’d have to do was come up with something catchy and unique that everybody would agree on…

Right.

Well, in the suggestion pool we got multiple variations on Cardin/Cardinal, clever puns, and irresistible alliterations.  During the Book Club / Literary Magazine elective, each suggestion had its own supporters and detractors—and even with majority vote, we having trouble coming to an agreement. 

As often happens in a “heated” group situation like this, it’s hard to remember where the solution came from.  But somebody suggested “The Cardin Quill”—which combined the Cardinal and feather idea with the old-fashioned quill pen for writing, and that just seemed to work.  We dropped the “Cardin,” making it simply The Quill for elegance (knowing full well that people can continue to refer to it as The Cardin Quill, if they want!), and we have a consensus.

At least for now!

[Side Note:  The Quill section of the magazine will showcase student creativity—stories, poems, drawing, photography, etc.  A new section of the magazine will be called Intrinsically Thoughtful, which will showcase debates about current topics.  Strangely enough, there was no debate about the title for that portion of the magazine…]

—Dr. Prentiss

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

A Math and Physics Snow Dance


With the unseasonably warm winter we’ve been having, many of us are wondering if we’ll get a snow storm at all before spring comes. In hopes of snow, here are some snow-related math problems. They even tie in with what we’re currently studying in physics, pre-calculus, and AP calculus (work and energy, logarithms and exponents, and applications of derivatives, respectively)!  See if you can try to solve the following:

1.    It takes a snow plow 60.0 seconds to push a 5460 kg pile of snow along a straight level road at a constant velocity of 16 m/s. If the plow exerts a force of 7600 N on the snow, how much work does it do? What is the kinetic energy of the snow pile as it is being moved?
 2.  A snow removal company developed a logarithmic mathematical model for the number of miles  s  of roads that can be cleared of snow per truck per hour based on h, the depth of the snow in inches:

Use this model to find how many miles of roads can be cleared by one truck in one hour when  h=10 inches.


3.   There is no snow on Janet’s driveway when snow begins to fall at midnight. From midnight to 9 A.M., snow accumulates on the driveway at a rate modeled by  



cubic feet per hour,

where t is measured in hours since midnight. Janet starts removing snow at 6 A.M. (t=6). The rate g(t), in cubic feet per hour, at which Janet removes snow from the driveway at time  hours after midnight is modeled by


Find the rate of change of the volume of snow on the driveway at 8 A.M.
*Don’t forget to put your calculator in radian mode when evaluating trigonometric functions!


Answers


1.  

   

2.      27.16 miles of road


3.     To find the rate of change of volume of snow on the driveway at 8 A.M., you must subtract the snow removal function g(t) from the snow accumulation function f(t).


cubic feet per hour.


Kathy Wann
Math and Science Instructor

Thursday, January 17, 2013

New Ways to Learn "Old Stories"


How do you learn about history through images, imaginary journals, medical reports, and animation?  In Western Civilizations I and II and APUSH, we have all been experimenting with new ways to learn “old stories,” exploiting the myriad possibilities of creative thinking and electronic media.  Indeed, my classroom is quickly turning into a new type of living museum!

Dr. Benton J. Komins
Humanities Instructor