More coasters!

The kids had so much fun doing roller coaster math that I had to come up with more problems for today. I think I'm enjoying it as much as they are. They have a chart with each roller coaster's stats. Part of the lesson was learning how to locate the information they needed. Here was today's lesson: (the numbers for trusses and support beams are made up, but everything else is real)

1. Trusses are used to support roller coaster tracks. If a truss is placed every 10 feet, how many trusses were used to build the Ninja?

2. Each truss has 50 support beams that are used to build the truss. How many support beams were used to build the Ninja?

3. How many more support beams does Evil Knievel have compared to the Ninja?

4. Each car of the Magnum holds 6 people. If there are 6 cars in a train, how many people can ride per train?

5. The Magnum is about 2 minutes long. If there are 3 trains running at once, how many people can ride the Magnum in an hour?

6. Cedar Point is open from 10am to 11pm on Saturdays. How many people could ride the Magnum each Saturday if every train was filled to capacity?

7. Each train on The Corkscrew has six 4 passenger cars. The ride is 2 minutes long and runs 3 trains at a time. How many people can ride the Corkscrew in an hour?

8. Mom and Dad get in the line to ride Top Thrill Dragster. The sign says it is a 90 minute wait from the point they get in line. If it takes 2 minutes and 30 seconds to ride the Millennium and 18 minutes to get back on the ride, how many times could Aiden and Grandpa ride the Millennium before Mom and Dad get on Top Thrill Dragster?

9. Zoë and Grandma don’t want to ride either of those roller coasters. Instead they decide to drive the bumper cars. If the bumper cars run for 2 minutes and have a 5 minute wait, how many times could they drive a bumper car while waiting for the others?

I was afraid that these might be too difficult for them, but they did a great job! My favorite part was Zoë made up her own problem for #7. She was reading the problem out loud and added "the ride is not working today, so how many people rode it". We took a snack break at that point, and got a good laugh out of it.

Also, Aiden met his goal of typing 20 words per minute today, so we all met our family goals and earned Guitar Hero World Tour. We spent some time this afternoon rocking out together. Now we need to find some new long term goals and something else to work toward.