Mr. Archimede's Bath & Linear Functions

For this assignment I chose to focus on the children's book Mr. Archimede's Bath by Pamela Allen. This is a book I grew up reading. In the story, Mr. Archimede cannot understand why his bathtub is always overflowing and is growing sick of cleaning up the mess. One day he decides to find out where the water is coming from. Mr. Archimede fills the tub with just a little bit of water and hops in with his friends kangaroo, wombat, and goat. He cannot believe the water overflows when all the friends jump in and kicks them out one by one, blaming one after another for the mess. Mr. Archimede finds as each friend hops out, the water depth lowers each time, finally concluding that the addition of each person adds 2 inches to the height of the water.

Mr. Archimede's Bath represents a function of the number of people in the tub and the height of the water. For each input (number of people), one output is produced (height of the water). This particular function is linear because the rate of change (2 inches) is constant.

It is important to depict math in not only real life situations but children's books because it is a way to show real world application at a young age. These concepts are important to build off of in the years to come. Literature in general is effective in portraying mathematical situations because it can numbers and formulas and change them into words and situations which is helpful in understand where the numbers and formulas are derived from and how they work in the world around us.

Taylor McCulley