Compound Units
There are many instances in every day life where students are confronted by compound measures. Speed, distance and time are met in mathematics and physics to calculate speeds using different units. This resource list is to support the teaching and learning of the use of compound units such as speed, flow rates, unit pricing and density to solve problems.
Visit the secondary mathematics webpage to access all lists.
Shopping Mall
This video raises quick-fire starter questions. A question is posed for each topic, offering pause points while students discuss the question.
Boxes of Teabags is a starter about best buys. Two techniques are demonstrated, each of which can be used depending on the values provided. The first example shows how buying three small boxes of tea bags gives the same number of tea bags as one large box thus prices can be compared. The second example requires students to find the unit price in order to make a comparison.
Mobile Phone Tariffs: using graphs, a pay as you go tariff is compared to a monthly deal, plotting minutes against cost, to see which is the better option. This starter could be used as inspiration for looking at unusual rates such as the cost of calls per minute, the number of texts per day and the cost per text in different situations.
Speed, Distance and Time
This resource covers the ideas of instantaneous speed and average speed, calculating speed, distance and time, problems involving mixed units, distance - time graphs and other compound measures.
The activities file contains the activity Speed to School in which students are required to collect information about how long it takes students to get to school and then calculate their average speed. Running Speeds asks students to analyse men’s running world records over different distances by calculating average speeds and then using the results to make predictions. Premiership Goal Rates asks students to explore the rates of goals per match and goals per match of different football teams.