Book Title - Is a Blue Whale the Biggest Thing There is?
By - Robert E. Wells
1. The book Is a Blue Whale the Biggest Thing There is? takes the reader in a journey through the idea of size and area. Wells starts off talking about the size of a Blue Whale's fluke and how it is bigger than most animals such as an elephant of giraffe. Through the illustrations he shows the size of the whale when compared to the animals. Then he talks about what if we put 100 whales in a really big jar, and then stacked the jars on top of each other. Then he talks about the jars or whales being compared to Mt. Everest and how small they are in comparison. Then he stacks 100 Mt Everest on top of each other and says that it "would be a mere whisker on the face of the earth". He continues this pattern by talking about bags filled with earths, compared to the sun and then crates of suns compared to the star Antares, then Antares to our Galaxy, then our Galaxy compared to the Universe.
2. The mathematical concept explained in the book is the idea of exponential functions or growth. Each item he talks about is a certain number of times larger than the proceeding object. For example the sun is x times larger than the earth and the earth is y times larger than the whales. If one wanted to find the exponential function or growth they could find the size of the earth and have it divided by the size of the sun and the answer would give the number of times larger the sun is than the earth. Thus the growth factor between the two.
3. Literature is an effective way to teach mathematical concepts because it uses more concrete things to show the math that is being preformed. It is perhaps easier for children to understand that something is 2x larger than something else when comparing it to another object, rather than using just number. Overall it is effective because it applies the ideas of familiar objects and alters those objects using math, and it shows more clear changes.
Nice Job on relating the story to exponential growth! This example works perfectly :)
ReplyDeleteGreat example of exponential growth! These functions aren't always easy to find in literature.
ReplyDeleteI liked what you said about a child understanding a size of an object by showing them can be easier than telling them mathematically. Being able to visualize a concept can be very beneficial.
ReplyDeletesarah,
ReplyDeletethis is a great selection. your synopsis of the narrative is done very well. i like your attempt to relate the content of the text to exponential functions, but i think it would actually be more appropriate to relate it to linear functions. if an object is certain number of times another one, for instance 10x bigger, then that would just be y = 10x. now if the ratios between the size of the sun, earth, and whale were the same, then i guess i could see what you are trying to say. but if just comparing two objects the relationship would be linear.
professor little