If you are looking for an experiment to do that is fun and will accurately demonstrate the formula (D = r t), then this is one you should consider. You need to be able to get to an airport or other location that might have a moving walkway to do this experiment.

You need to get the length of the moving walkway either by calling the airport or measuring it yourself. That's the tough part. Now, get a stopwatch or a watch with a second hand.

As you step onto the moving walkway start the stopwatch, and as you step off stop it. You should do this several times to get a good sampling of numbers. To make the math easier, convert the minutes of the times to seconds.

Now, average your times by adding all of them up and dividing the sum by the number of times you had.

To find the rate, "r", of the moving walkway, or how fast it goes, put the length of the walkway into the "D" spot of the formula (D=rt) and the average of the times in the "t" spot.

Solve for "r" by dividing "D" by "t". This number should be the rate of the moving walkway in feet/second.

I will put the information from my experiment on this page, to give you an example.

The distance of the moving walkway I was on was 279 ft. 10.5 in. To get one unit, I change the inches to feet by dividing 10.5 by 12 (inches in a foot). That gets me 279.875 ft.

The table below shows the times in minutes and seconds, seconds, and the variance of each time from the average time.

TIME IN MIN & SEC     TIME IN SECONDS           VARIANCES (TIME - AVERAGE TIME)
      2     17.780                               137.780                         -0.406
      2     18.700                               138.700                         +0.514
      2     18.400                               138.400                         +0.214
      2     18.290                               138.290                         +0.104
      2     18.150                               138.150                         -0.036
      2     18.710                               138.710                         +0.524
      2     17.435                               137.435                         -0.751
      2     18.105                               138.105                         -0.081
      2     18.340                               138.340                         +0.154
      2     17.990                               137.990                         -0.196
      2     18.150                               138.150                         -0.036
                              TOTAL         1,520.050                         +0.004

Then the average time is 1,520.05”/11 = 138.186”

To get the rate of the moving walkway I divided 279.875 ft. by 138.186 sec. Which equals 2.025 ft./sec. That is the rate.

I hope you are able to try this experiment, and have some fun!

For more information and ideas about this project you may link to a page written by one of the following math artists: Danielle, Darlene, Kellie, Jill, Nanyal, Kevin, Crystal, Rachel, Christina's First and Third Web Page, Jennifer, Candice, Vincent, Esther and Melinda. Most of us are in this picture but not in order of names.