Gina Ogden Goshen Middle School

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Gina OgdenGoshen Middle School
SLIPPERY SLOPES
THE CHALLENGE
You have been hired to design and build a
practice course for the athletes participating in
the Winter Olympic event, Speed Skiing.  The
objective is to design a slope that will minimize
the time required to get from the top of the hill
to the bottom. The X-treme Ski Company is
opening the project up for competitive bids.  A
contract will be awarded to the group that can
design the fastest slope.  Each competitor must
construct a scale model of the slope and test it.
Are you ready for the challenge?
UNIT OVERVIEW
 

• You will investigate different events in the
  upcoming Winter Olympics.  Working with a group
  you will design and create a model of a practice
  course for the Olympic event, Speed Skiing.
   Through this unit you will demonstrate your
  knowledge of slope while constructing the course.

GUIDING QUESTIONS

• What are the different events involved in the
  Winter Olympics?
• How does the slope of a hill affect the
  performance of a skier?
• How could a skier minimize the time it takes
  them to travel from the top of a hill to the
  bottom?
• How does the height of the hill affect the
  speed of the skier?

STANDARDS

• Graph proportional relationships, interpreting
  the unit rate as the slope of the graph. Compare
  two different proportional relationships
  represented in different ways. For example,
  compare a distance-time graph to a distance-time
  equation to determine which of two moving objects
  has greater speed.
• Use similar triangles to explain why the slope m
  is the same between any two distinct points on a
  non-vertical line in the coordinate plane derive
  the equation y mx for a line through the origin
  and the equation y mx b for a line
  intercepting the vertical axis at b.

• Related Careers
• Civil Engineer
• Carpenter
• Olympic Athlete

CEEMS is supported by the National Science
Foundation grant 1102990. Any opinions,
findings, conclusions, and/or recommendations are
those of the investigators and do not necessarily
reflect the views of the Foundation.