In our textbook, a question is posed about the Asano Taiko Company of Japan. The larges drum, being 4.9 meters in diameter and about 4.5 meters high, the students questioned how big a cubic meter was. A couple of my students, who enjoy putting together things, offered to put together the meter sticks (after borrowing a few extras from the science teachers) to see this. It was great seeing the minds figure out the best ways to “brace” the cube. Here’s a photo of our result with some kiddos, as they said, “thinking outside the box”. Oh, and the drum? Only about 94 of those cubes for the volume!
This is a great idea! I will have to try this. It might be nice to make other units for a frame of reference also.
Yes. We also built a cubic foot. While I was in the process of teaching I had a student figure out that there were approx. 27 of these smaller cubes in the large one. Happy for him to discover this… hoping that he also paid attention to the other parts of the lesson while discovering this….
Very cool! Love the hands on part…which is something I need to do more of in class. Thanks for the visual.
Looks fun and it allows your students to make personal connections to the numbers on the page. Great work!
Yes — I loooove student volunteers who want to build stuff! Congrats on a really cool model that I’m sure none of them (or you) will ever forget!