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Road Lines

8/31/2011

3 Comments

 
Listening to Dan's talk on iTunes has makes me really want to post this, because this is the one problem that actually caught my curiosity.  I was driving home one day, noticing these nice dotted lines on the highway as I came home.  I wondered what I could do with it, and so I made my carpool friend drive home one day...


Act 1 - Roadlines

Road Lines - Act 1 from Timon Piccini on Vimeo.

I especially like this, because I feel like it is the "wizardry" of mathematics, something so innocent, could tell someone so much.

Act 2 - Measurements

Road Lines - Act 2 from Timon Piccini on Vimeo.

Some other very vital information is what is the distance.  Well if you are from the US of A (do americans actually say that?), you can use this great article, just keep in mind my video is shot in Canada (so Km/h), or as my Blair Miller helped me find you can use this resource for British Columbia...
Picture
Or just pull out Google Earth and measure, that mother is pretty precise.

Act 3 - the Reveal

Road Lines - Act 3 from Timon Piccini on Vimeo.

And there it is.  I feel as if I may have cheated you guys out of the reveal, just doing the picture in picture.  Would have been better show me pull in the camera onto the dashboard?   What do you think?

The Sequels

Where I could see this going is A) develop the general case for m/s to Km/h.  Or better yet lines/sec to km/h (MPH if you are a friend of Uncle Sam (do Americans ever say that?  I need to get cultured)).  For some reason I feel like this would be a sweet app, have students make it.  I also thought of bringing in movies, car chases, to see how fast they are really going.  This one even mentions some of the speeds in the intense Bullitt car chase.

How else could I extend this?  I don't know, but I think my grades should have fun with it... 
3 Comments
Ryan
9/1/2013 04:40:51 am

So I counted 31 lines and 30 spaces in 20 seconds. If each line and space is 3 meters that would be a total of 183 meters in 20 seconds or 549 meters per minute which is 32940 meters per hour or 32.94 km/h. Where am I making my mistake?

Reply
Timon Piccini
9/1/2013 04:43:07 am

Good stuff. You need to know that I am driving on the highway so the total length (line and space) is 13m! Insane but that's what the article explains is we have a terrible ability to estimate how long the lines are.

Reply
Terri
9/12/2014 01:23:22 pm

US of A -- Rarely. Mostly to be cute or dramatic.

Uncle Sam -- yes, but usually when trying to make some kind of a political point.

Otherwise, it's most often just plain old "the U.S." or "the United States." If being chanted as an expression of patriotism (or jingoism), whether drunken or sober, it's "U! S! A!" Hope that helps. :)

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