Giant Sicilian delivery box
- How many square inches is the Giant Sicilian pizza?
- How many square inches is the Giant Sicilian’s delivery box?
- What is a guess that is too low?
- What is a guess that is too high?
- What is your best guess?
- What factors may affect the accuracy of our answer?
- What information do we need to figure it out?
This problem will likely begin by students first calculating the area of the 54″ square pizza and getting 2,916 square inches (54″ x 54″). When you play the answer and students hear “that’s almost 3,000 square inches of steaming hot pizza,” they will have to determine whether that answer seems reasonable and decide on what they think the voice over should have said.
The second problem is where it gets more interesting. Students will have to determine the dimensions of the pizza delivery box to find its area. If the pizza is a 54″ square, then the delivery box must be at least an inch or two bigger on each side. That gives an area of 3,025 to 3,136 square inches. When you play the answer and students hear “the giant pizza delivery box is 56 square inches”, I hope minor chaos ensues. Students will be forced to question or defend their answers. In this case, Modern Marvels is certainly wrong and should have said it is either “a square that is 56 inches on each side” or “3,136 square inches”.
- Answer to “How many square inches is the Giant Sicilian pizza?”
- Answer to “How many square inches is the Giant Sicilian’s delivery box?”
- CCSS 3.MD.5 Recognize area as an attribute of plane figures and understand concepts of area measurement.
- CCSS 3.MD.6 Measure areas by counting unit squares (square cm, square m, square in, square ft, and improvised units).
- CCSS 3.MD.7 Relate area to the operations of multiplication and addition.
- CCSS 4.MD.3 Apply the area and perimeter formulas for rectangles in real world and mathematical problems. For example, find the width of a rectangular room given the area of the flooring and the length, by viewing the area formula as a multiplication equation with an unknown factor.
- CCSS 4.NBT.3 Use place value understanding to round multi-digit whole numbers to any place.
I really like this activity, so this comment isn’t meant to take anything away from it. However, the beep censoring immediately makes me think of expletives. Apparently, this is a common effect, used best in Jimmy Kimmel’s “This week in unnecessary censorship.” I guess it won’t be an issue for elementary school students, but might have some unexpected consequences in high school.
Some other activities that could link with the basic story:
(1) how big are the other pizzas? Included in this question is how the size of a circular pizza should be quoted.
(2) which pizza is the best value? I could only see prices for at the three largest ones. More prices are available on the website, but it is a bit clunky and I couldn’t find the giant square.
(3) explore value for toppings on larger pizzas.
Thanks Joshua. It is funny how people initially assume bleeps are bad words. It causes a laugh but is never a big deal.
I actually have a lesson similar to your #1 suggestion here: http://robertkaplinsky.com/work/better-pizza-deal/
It would be great to have a modified version of this for 8th grade where they are told that it is almost 3000 square inches and without a calculator they would need to figure out the dimensions of the pizza. They could simplify the root 3000 to 10 times root 30. Then they could estimate what root 30 would be to multiply it by 10 to determine the pizzas dimensions. They could also just guess and check until they got close too I guess.
Fortunately, you can modify it as you like and then see how it goes.