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 Geometry
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Curious Circumferences |
In
a small group, complete the following activity to discover an astounding fact about the distance around circles of different
diameters.
Suppose you had a small plate and a bicycle tire. The diameter of
the plate was 5 inches and the diameter of the tire was 30 inches. Compute
the circumference of both the plate and the bicycle tire.
Pretend you had strings of these two lengths. Now suppose you
added 9.42 inches to each string. If you put these new strings
around the plate and the tire, how far outside each would the
string be? You will be amazed when you compute the new
iameters.
More
amazing is the following: The diameter of Earth at the equator is about
8,000 miles. If you could put a string around Earth
and then add 9.42 inches to this string, how far above the surface
do you think the string would be? Change the diameter measurement to inches
and do the computations to find the answer.
©Glencoe/McGraw-Hill
Pre-Algebra
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