Lab Procedure

In this lab, you will calculate the average speed for five snowmobiles. The time it takes each snowmobile to travel a certain distance is listed below. Transfer this information for each snowmobile to the chart in your lab packet and calculate its speed. Remember, speed = distance / time.

Based on your calculations, you will predict the order in which the snowmobiles will finish the race. Be sure to record the calculated speeds and your predictions in your lab packet! They will be lost when you leave this page. If you run the program again, you will need to recalculate the speeds of the snowmobiles because each time you run the program the results will be different. After running the race, record the order in which the contestants finished.

Interactive Lab

Any time you see or hear the word per in the units for a value (miles per hour, cows per field), you can think of it mathematically as meaning divided by. For instance, a common way of measuring speed is in miles per hour (mph) -- mathematically, this means number of miles divided by number of hours. If you drive 100 miles in 2 hours time, you are averaging 50 miles per hour.

Analysis Questions

  1. Now that you've "raced" the snowmobiles, was your prediction about how they would finish right or wrong?

Try running the program again and recalculating the results -- everything make sense? Piece-O-Cake.

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