Activity with the Tortoise and Hare

Today, I ran the first part of an activity with two classes using the Tortoise and Hare.  For the first trail, I had students set the tortoise's speed at 5 ft/sec and 5 ft/sec for leg 1, a 5 sec rest and 10ft/sec for leg 2 for the hare.  The student put the information in and started the race. When the hare took a break, they paused the race and marked down the time.  They continued the race then marked down the time  each animal finished the race. 
After getting the data, I took time to show them how to figure the slope and draw the graph for both creatures.
The second time, I set the speed of the tortoise at 6 ft/sec and 12ft/sec for leg 1, a 10 sec break and 9 ft/sec for leg 2.  Again, we worked on graphing the results.
Since the race course was 100 yards long, we converted the feet per sec into yards per sec.  The graph was in increments of 5 yards and 5 secs so we did the math to convert the slope into whole numbers.  For the second race the tortoise went 10 yards per 5 secs.  I apologize for the photos being flipped but I'm still figuring out how to use iphoto.


Then we graphed both the tortoise and the hare on the same grid.

This way they could see what is happening and its a real life application of slope.  Tomorrow we will do a couple more and begin to write the equations.  I did this in Geometry and Algebra II.  I am so happy with how this worked out.