Monday, February 17, 2014

cleaning my mail

There has been a lot of discussion about Common Core.  I teach science, there is not a common core for that.  There is, however, Next Generation Science standards.  Which really should be "science standards aligned with Common Core."   I was going through this that I had sent to a person involved with Next Generation (and where is Jean Luc and Worf?).

Never got an answer.

"I read the power point for next generation recently forwarded to me.

It had this
"On June 1, a fast growing species of algae is accidentally introduced into a lake in a city park. It starts to grow and cover the surface of the lake in such a way that the area covered by the algae doubles every day. If it continues to grow unabated, the lake will be totally covered and the fish in the lake will suffocate. At the rate it is growing, this will happen on June 30. "

I am not a biologist, botonist or hortoculturist, or anything like that.  I have to ask.  "What supper algae is this?" Genus and species is nice.  I mean there is math here, excellent. But is it real?  I cannot envision any plant that grows at that rate.  Okay, cells reproduce and double, but some die, some are eaten....other thing happen. I know of algal blooms and such, even teaching it in Environmental science now.  I remember Chinese cleaning algae out of the ocean in preparation of the Olympics.

So my question is, does the quote I have accurately reflect what can really happen? "

BTW the answer is "the day before it covers the lake, what ever day that is."

I can do geometrical progression.

No comments:

Post a Comment