Many years ago, I helped create a cross curricular unit with math, science, history, and social studies about Pearl Harbor. Although math can be one of the harder topics to find this type of activity.
I created three units for students to work through associated with the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the battle of Dunkirk. I admit that it took a lot of research on my part to find all the information but once I had the units finished, it was worth it.
I'll start with my unit on the battle of Dunkirk in which a flotilla of mismatched ships and boats managed to move over 300,000 people from the continent to the United Kingdom within a short time. I researched the length of the route, the number of people moved each day, and the type of ships and boats used to evacuate the military after I showed them a video clip on the event. Students looked at maps, numbers, to see the size of the operation.
For the mathematical part, I asked students how many boats they could scrounge from around the village, and then how many total if we included the next closest village. In the process they had to figure out how many people could be moved per load. I had them assume one round trip per hour. They had to calculate the number of hours it would take people to move the same number of people and then convert the hours into days, and weeks. At the end of this activity, students were amazed at the results and impressed.
I also created a unit on Japanese mini subs, the type that snuck into Pearl Harbor during the attack. I had to research to find the type of submarine that carried the mini sub from Japan to Hawaii, it's size, the speed of the "mother" submarine and mini subs, etc. Students used the speed of the mini sub to calculate how long before the bombing they had to leave the mother sub to get to Pearl Harbor, the number of cubic feet the pilots had to fit in as they travelled, and the speed of the mother submarine to go from Japan to Hawaii to place the mini subs in position.
I used this exercise as a way for students to understand what the Japanese commanders had to consider as they planned the attack. I admit, they probably used subs closer to Hawaii but I wanted them to see what went into planning something of this size and distance.
The final activity had to do with the balloon bombs the Japanese released into the air. Some of these travelled all the way from Japan all the way the states like Oregon, or Washington. Research is a wonderful thing because it allowed me to find the size of the balloons, the amount of sand used as ballast, the distances from where the balloons were launched to where they landed, the speed of the jet stream and the amount of bomb materials included.
I included a map of the Pacific Ocean for students to mark down the places bombs landed and draw lines from the place of launch in Japan to the bombs. They marked down the distances for each one. Once they had all of this done, they needed to calculate how many hours it would take as a minimum for the balloons to travel to each place. In addition, they needed to calculate how much paper was needed to create the balloons which required them to calculate the surface area of a sphere and use the results. They also needed to calculate the total amount of sand needed for all the balloons. Again it showed students what the Japanese had to calculate before they could even launch the balloons.
I could just as easily have researched the trajectories involved in guns firing from on board a ship, or used trig to determine how thick the steel should be on a ship to prevent ammo from penetrating, the approach of a plane to an aircraft carrier or angle of take off from the deck of a ship. So many possibilities. I admit, it will take quite a bit of research to find the information but it is worth it because it makes some of these events more real. Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear. Have a great day.
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