Brisbane, the third largest city in Australia and the capital of Queensland, was seriously flooded, natural disasters are not seen here since 1974. As I write this post, thousands of volunteers helping affected people and businesses to clean and get back on their feet.
media provide extensive coverage of the disaster and its aftermath for weeks, providing opportunities for teachers to explore math with their students some of the statistics being quoted. This article explores a particular statistic, the amount of water released from Wivenhoe Dam in one day. There are many similar opportunities for teachers of mathematics who want to incorporate some "real math" with relevant, interesting connections with current events.
Brisbane floods, 1893
More than 100 years, 1893, Brisbane suffered severe flooding from the inner city and low-lying suburbs, when the Brisbane River broke its banks in February 1893, after a tropical cyclone: 1893 flood was the only one of several floods around this time, because no other floods in 1887, 1890 and the other two in 1893, two weeks after a major flood.
Brisbane floods, 1974
in January 1974, after several weeks of heavy rain, cyclone "Wanda" was developed by the Queensland coast, which is then turned into a rain depression and dumped huge amounts of water to the city and river basin Brisbane.Rezultat was a flood of many Riverside and low-lying suburbs, and over 6700 houses to be flooded.
Wivenhoe Dam
After the water went, and city planners have had the opportunity to analyze what is causing floods and how they could prevent the repetition of the devastating flooding of many homes and businesses, it was decided to build a large dam upstream of Brisbane, as a measure for flood mitigation. It's Wivenhoe Dam Dam: This dam, which is currently pouring huge amounts of water over the dressing up, is an impressive structure with some impressive stats:
- Height: 50 feet
- length: 2.3 km
- Capacity: 2640000000 cubic meters
- Area: 109.4 square meters
- Coastline: 462 km
- Catchment Area: 7.020 square kilometers
- The average annual rainfall: 904 mm
- Maximum capacity: 225%
2011 Flood, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
In this article, Brisbane is slowly recovering from another severe flood, the peak that is 13 January 2011. Although the flood peak is about 1 meter below the peak in 1974, this time 20,000 house is flooded, and the economic cost is much higher. In the media these natural disasters, Wivenhoe Dam has drawn understandable amount of attention. Specifically, management of water retained behind the dam and the water released over the spillway is of great interest to the people of Brisbane. At the peak of water release, over 645,000 megaliters water are released in one day. This is about half of the reduction in flood storage in Wivenhoe, which is 1.45 million megaliters on top of the water stored for drinking water supply and Brisbane.
How much water is it?
six hundred 40-5000 megaliters sounds a lot - it is. But this amount of water is very hard to visualize. How can teachers help students understand this amount?
Step 1: How many liters?
One liter of a known quantity for the students who buy milk in liters. It can be turned into a 1000 ml or 1000 cubic centimeters. This is the same volume of one thousand place value block, which is 10 centimeter cube.
Ask students what would the same volume as a liter -. One liter of milk, obviously, a medium soft drink bottle, less than an old house made of bricks
Step 2: Demonstrate a cubic meter
If you have a cubic meter kit, you can construct a cubic meter by one meter of wood and angle of the connector. How big is it, really? Students May be surprised at the size when they see the actual cubic meter. See how many students fit in that space.
Ask students how many liters equal volume cubic meter. Show them thousands block for comparison. Students should see that one liter block is one tenth the size of cubic feet in any dimension, length, width and height. Clearly, a cubic meter has a capacity of 1,000 liters. What is another name for thousands of gallons? Prefix for "one thousand", the "kilo", 1,000 liters = 1 kiloliter. What is the weight of cubic meter? One liter weighs close to two pounds (at 4 ° C, that is his exact weight). Therefore, one cubic meter or one kiloliter, water has a mass of 1,000 kilograms, or one ton! Students will probably be surprised that one cubic meter is approximately the same mass as a small car.
Step 3: Talk to introduce, the greater the amount of
Depending on where you live, Students May be familiar with home pools. In Brisbane, many families have their own "backyard" pool. These pools are usually about 7 or 8 feet, 3 or 4 meters wide and 1.5 m depth. This pool is a typical size for its type, and contains 50,000 liters, or 50 cubic meters.
Instead, your students can become familiar with the larger, bazen.Olimpijski municipal swimming pool is 50 meters, 25 meters wide and 2 meters deep. Its capacity can be calculated using the formula for the volume of rectangular prisms: Volume = length x width x height = 50 mx 25 mx 2 m = 2.500 cubic meters
Some communities have a domestic water collection tank, which could be about 500 gallons for a small tank, or several thousand gallons for more.
Ask students to compare the amount of water with known amounts of other liquids. How many baths could fill from the domestic water tank? How many tubs of ice cream will fill the backyard pool? What would the mass of water in the pool or container be? How many people would need to pick it up?
Step 4: Calculate the volume of rainfall and flood flow
Continuing in the same way, students can calculate the comparison between the well-known domestic water and water in a dam or a flood. For example, water released from Wivenhoe Dam in one day was 645 000 megaliters. How is this? First, some conversions:
- 645 000 645 000 000 000 ML = L = 645,000,000,000,000 ml
We are the larger units can be used in place megaliters thousand megaliters one gigaliter. So:
- ml = 645 000 645 GL
Second, how much space it take? If you put the water in the tank, how big would it be? From 1 kL = one cubic meter, we can work to 645 GL = 645 million cubic meters. If he was in a square tank one kilometer on each side, the water will be 645 feet deep. - If the Empire State Building could be dropped into the tank, it would have 200 feet of water over its highest point
- How the Olympic pool to fill the water? 258 000.
- How many 5-liter ice cream bucket to fill it? 1.2 billion.
Third, how much to water weigh? Since a cubic meter of water weighs one tonne, 645 GL of water would weight 645 million tons. This mass is:
- 6.45 million railway trucks carrying 100 tons each
- , about 1.9 million fully loaded jumbo aircraft
Finally, as far as drinking water to the traffic and people? Each person should drink about 2 liters of water a day. 645 GL to supply drinking water for about
- 320 000 000 000 people a day -. 50 times the population of the Earth
for the supply of drinking water for two million people in Brisbane, the amount of potable water to their needs:
- 160,000 days or 441 years.
Of course, people use water for drinking over, so that more realistic calculations based on the average daily water use by the citizens of Brisbane - about 150 L each:
- 2150 days or 5.8 years.
Summary
everyday life, as every teacher knows math, is filled with authentic, real-world uses of mathematics. Students will benefit from seeing how their math textbooks can be revived through the inclusion of interesting, relevant contexts of daily news broadcast or newspaper.
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