Area and Geocaching

Mr. Teal's classes worked used our GPS devices to describe the resulting effects on perimeter and area when dimensions of a shape are changed proportionally.  

Students had to mark off a rectangular area of approximately 4 yards by 3 yards.  They used cones to mark each of the four corners.  They then used the GPS tracking devices to calculate the area of the rectangle.  They had to double all of the dimensions of the rectangle.  After marking their double dimensions, the used the GPS tracking devices to measure and calculate the area of the new larger rectangle.  They used their calculations and divided the area of their second rectangle by the area of the first rectangle to determine the correlations between the two.  Students then had to describe their findings, and answer some other critical thinking questions.