Dover-Foxcroft

Barbie falls safely, thanks to pupils’ math skills

By Stuart Hedstrom 
Staff Writer

    DOVER-FOXCROFT — An annual tradition for eighth-graders in Ryan Nickerson’s math classes at SeDoMoCha Middle School is the “Barbie bungee jump.” The students, working in small groups, are tasked with using their knowledge of proportions to determine how many elastics are needed to drop their dolls from the top of a second-story stairwell to get as close to the ground as possible without making contact.

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    BANDING TOGETHER — Eighth-graders in Ryan Nickerson’s math classes at SeDoMoCha Middle School in Dover-Foxcroft applied a math lesson on proportions to bungee jumping, calculating how many elastics would be needed to make a bungee cord to drop a Barbie doll down a stairwell to get as close to the ground as possible. Watching Singing Barbie’s plunge on Feb. 12 are, from left, Nickerson, Kylie Dow, Breanna Jazowski and Hillary Redmond.

    On Feb. 12 the four pre-algebra classes — algebra students will be jumping later in the year — were ready for their Barbies to take the bungee jump test after conducting practice jumps in class from a smaller height and then using this data to make their calculations. “We started it on Tuesday,” Nickerson said, saying this year the eighth-graders spent three days on the project, which includes a packet to complete post-bungee jump.
    “You are going to get your Barbie and make your bungee cord the length of the prediction you made yesterday,” Nickerson said to the last of the four classes to meet on Feb. 12. The half dozen groups had the first 10 minutes of class to pick a doll out of a bin and grab handfuls of rubber bands to tie together, already having an idea of how many of the tan elastics they would need.
    “They did some test jumps in class and used the data they got from that for the proportions to figure out how long the actual cord will be,” Nickerson said about the lesson’s main objective, adding that the students had the actual height of the stairwell to use in their calculations.
    “They seem to be getting closer every year,” Nickerson, who has had his students take part in the Barbie bungee jump in all five of his years at SeDoMoCha, said. “We had one group get within two centimeters,” he said, saying a doll’s hair grazed the floor after taking the plunge. 

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    CLOSE TO THE EDGE — Josh Whittemore gets ready to let his group’s Barbie drop after he and Hunter Watt and Jacki Pelletier calculated how many rubber bands would be needed to make a safe bungee cord for their doll. The bungee jump is a hands-on lesson as part of a study of proportions in grade 8 math teacher Ryan Nickerson’s, left, classes.

    “It’s gone very well this year, we haven’t had any Barbies lose their heads this year, knock on wood,” Nickerson quipped in-between answering a few final questions before the students left and classroom and headed over to the elementary side of the building.
    One at a time the groups walked to the top of the stairs for their turn at the bungee jump. “You all get three drops, so we are going to take the best of three,” Nickerson said. Several students were positioned on the ground floor to measure, watching closely to estimate the low point of the dolls’ drop and then checking the distance up from the tile with a yardstick.
    The elastic count varied from 26 to 40 among the six groups, with some Barbies hitting the ground and others having a safe but not as thrilling  jump with a shorter fall. “You may add or subtract however many elastics you want for three more jumps,” Nickerson said as the students then opted to make such adjustments.
    “We wanted to see how close we could get,” Kylie Dow said about the aim of her group which calculated a 30-elastic cord for Singing Barbie’s bungee jump.
    “We had to do it once in here but it wasn’t the same height, so we did our best estimate,” Breanna Jazowski, who worked with Dow and Hillary Redmond, added. “It’s definitely more than what we normally do,” she said about the hands-on lesson applying math concepts.

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    LOOK OUT BELOW — A group of students awaits the result of how close their Barbie bungee jump doll came to the floor of a stairwell at the SeDoMoCha School on Feb. 12. Looking on is grade 8 math teacher Ryan Nickerson and, from left, Hannah Sprecher, Emily Mooers and Kenzie Mcleod.

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    MATH IS A SNAP — Caitlin Davis, left, and Alicia Chambers and their math teacher Ryan Nickerson watch as Barbie drops to the ground below via a cord of rubber bands with a length calculated by the two SeDoMoCha eighth-graders.

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