I've Seen That Shape Before - Students explore various web sites, looking for pictures of solid geometric shapes in the buildings they view online. In pre-activities and extensions, students use physical models to learn the names and explore the characteristics of simple solid shapes.

City Hopping: Planning a Business Trip - Teams of students play the role of applicants for a job as assistant to the president of a large company. As part of the interviewing process, each team must plan a multi-city trip for the firm's president and present a proposed travel schedule and budget.

The Next Billion - Students predict when the world population will reach 7 billion. To do so, they use an on-line counter that simulates the changing world population. Students discuss the reliability of their predictions, compare them to past trends, and discuss social factors that can affect population growth.

Five's a Crowd: A Game of Population Density - Students play a game in which they try to list 5 countries or states in order from most crowded to least crowded. Using area and population data from a web site, they estimate quotients to make their list. They determine whose list is closest to the actual order by applying a mathematical model (scoring system), which they later evaluate.

Whelk-Come to Mathematics: Using Rational Functions to Investigate the behavior of Northwestern Crows - an i-Math lesson plan. In this lesson students use rational functions to explore the possible reasons behind the observation that northwestern crows consistently drop a type of mollusk called a whelk from a height of 5 meters. Click here to go directly to the i-Math Investigation upon which it is based.