Thursday, March 27, 2014

Problems on gold

Due to parent teacher conferences, we are having 40 min classes today so rather plan too much, I concentrated on the warm-up.  It turns out Alaska produces a decent amount of gold from several mines within the state. I learned that gold production went from 800,000 to 954,000 troy ounces between 2008 and 2013.  The price of cold on 3/26/14 was 1304.40 per troy ounce.  I also learned that it costs $555 to produce one troy ounce of gold.  The total US production is 7,426,822 troy ounces.  Finally 32.15 troy ounces = 1 kg. 
Today I asked
1. What was the percent increase in production between 2008 and 2013?
2. What is the percent of gross profit per troy ounce?
3. What percent of the total US Gold production does Alaska account for. 
My students are actually finding these interesting because there is a Gold mine, not too far from here and they hire local population.  They did note that although oil production is decreasing, gold production is increasing. 
Tomorrow I think I"ll be asking questions like
1. How many pounds of gold did Alaska produce in 2013?
2. How many pounds of gold the is US produce in 2013?
3. How much did the price of gold change from the 26th to the 27th of March?  Give the answer in both dollar and percent.

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