Aman Afzal

903
Scholar's Challenge #4 B

Touchdown!!!!! Sheepshead Bay High-school wins the game. The team is running to the
coach for celebrations, but after the long game they're going to be very thirsty. So they go to the
water boy. After all those long drinks of water the water boy starts thinking. He thought about
how much water the team drinks. He (always) notices that when its 90 degrees Fahrenheit the
team drinks about 220 gallons of water, but when its 76 degrees Fahrenheit the players only
drink about 178 gallons of water. In this Scholars Challenge I am asked to model this linear
function with an equation. I was also asked What is the range of change, and what does the rate
of change mean in the context of the problem?
Since I was first asked to model this linear function with an equation, I thought to myself
about wouldnt it be easier for me to make one equation for the whole situation? So I tried it out,
and this is what it looked like:
1) y=mx+b = y= 3X-50

X Y
90 220
76 178
62 136

By looking at the equation you are probably wondering, What do the variables
mean?, How would you get that?, What is that in particular? I will explain that now.. The
formula y=mx+b has a lot of meanings to what it might mean, but this is basically a formula to
see if a graph or an equation is linear or not or just to figure out what points to plot from an
equation. The variables in this equation mean this:
1) The y, is the output/y-value
2) The m, is the slope or the rate of change- is when u find the steepness of the line or
find the difference between the y-value and the x-value
3)The x, is the input/x-value
4)The b, is the y-intercept-which is the point of the line that touches the y-axis
You would get this formula by just trying to figure out if the values that you got for x and y are
right or not. When you do that if all the values turn out to be right that means the equation is
linear, if not that means its not linear.
You are now probably wondering now what is linear? Well Ill tell you. Linear is
basically when a curve something is straight. You are now probably wondering, what does a
straight line have anything to do with this equation?!?!?!? It actually has a lot to do with the
equation. Y=mx+b is actually a linear equation. This means that after you substitute all the
numbers from the variables. After you do that you would have an equation and then you would
use that equation to figure if the graph that you will be drawing is going to be linear or not.
To answer the first question I used y=mx+b to figure out an equation and I came up with:
A) y=3x-50
As you can see the equation is in y=mx+b form. Doing all this work, is me giving the answer for
the first order; Model this linear function with an equation.
Moving on to the second part of the scholars challenge, What is the rate of change, and
what does it mean in the context of this problem? Now this questions is asking us to find the
Rate of change? Well Rate of Change is basically when you're trying to figure how much one
value changes from another, or how much does one value change by the next. In this problem
this is how I presented it:
1)y = 3x-50

X Y
90 220
76 178

The slope or the rate of change for this table would be 3. The constant rate of change , means that
the values that are changing from one point to another, it stays the same.
As you can see by this table, it has a constant rate of change. I would know that because
I found the Rate of Change by using the formula: ROC= change of y/ change in x - value of the y
over the value of the x. So for the table this is what is did:
1) ROC =Y/X- so the ROC is 3 since I
After finding the rate of change, I now had to do the second part of the second
problem which is, What does it mean in the context of the problem? To answer this question, it
was easy. The answer is: The rate of change for the problem is 3. This basically tells you the
difference is how ,much water gets consumed by the players according to the temperature.
In conclusion we know every step it took to complete this scholars challenge. We all
learned new things about math and have increased our vocabulary. The water boy noticed
something no one would care about, but he still had passion for what he wanted to know and
figured out the answer. Wonder what he might notice next..