I just made a worksheet in which students estimate the U.S. and world population for various years, an application that’s (very) roughly modeled with a quadratic equation, and came up with an idea for a project.
Students create a time line (poster board, computer, etc.) of the United States, and using the quadratic equation that models U.S. population growth, have them select 20-25 (or however many they have time for) important dates (Civil War, World Wars, etc) and calculate and graph the approximate U.S. population for that year. So the y-axis would be U.S. population and on the x-axis, time. This way, students are graphing a relevant, meaningful quadratic equation instead of just a random equation with arbitrary values. And since they can relate a growing population with the growth of a quadratic curve, it adds meaning to graphing quadratic equations.
Of course, they should elaborate each coordinate with a picture to represent the events they’ve selected.
Just a thought.
