In this culminating project, you will use functions to model real-life situations. Both activities in the lesson use the context of a cell phone’s battery power varying over time—either increasing from being charged or decreasing from being used. The relationships in each activity can be appropriately modeled with linear functions.
In the first activity, you will be given a table of values showing times and percentages of battery power. Study the rates of change in the table, which are fairly constant, and produce a simple model to make a prediction.
In the second activity, you will analyze images of battery-usage status from a cell phone. To gather the necessary information, you will need to make sense of the numerical values and the graph on each image. You will also need to determine how to organize and represent the information before you can use it to create a model.
During this project, you will engage in many aspects of the modeling cycle. You will identify important quantities in a situation, reason about relationships using representations that you consider useful, analyze the relationships mathematically to draw conclusions, and reflect on your results in context. Upon gaining new information, you can work to improve your model.
You might want to collect data from your own electronic devices, or to create presentations to explain your models.
Technology isn't required for this lesson, but there are opportunities for you to choose to use appropriate technology to solve problems.
Project Activities
- Estimate Time to Charge a Battery
- Analyze Percent Change Over Time
- Write an Equation to Model Data
Learning Targets
When you finish this project, you will have demonstrated how to:
- Use functions to model real-life situations and make predictions.