How fast do you walk? To find out, grab a small ball, two strips of masking tape, a stopwatch, and a few friends.

Place the two strips of tape 100 ft apart and have one of your classmates stand at the other end of the length. This person will record the time it takes you to walk from one end of the length to the other.

Since we are pretending to be in a parade we will try to toss a ball back and forth 16 inches high by 16 inches wide as you walk.

You will need to take the data three to five times and average it out.

If you drop the ball often you may wish to repeat this experiment and take an average or exclude data that does not fit your normal walking time.

Represent rate of walking in three or four ways: feet per second, inches per second, miles per hour, and maybe meters per second.

For time changes note that there are 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour.

For units of distance note that twelve inches equals one foot and 5280 feet equals one mile. Also 2.54 centimeters equals one inch.

An example of conversion from sec/ft to mph is:

        26.314 ft/100 ft * 5280 ft/mi = 1389.379 sec/1 mi

        1389.379sec/mi * 1 min/60 sec = 23.156 min/mi

        23.156 min/mi * 1 hr/60 min = .386 hrs/mi

Then, to find how many miles per hour you walk you will need to divide one hour by .386 hrs/mi.

        You should come up with 2.591 mph.

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, Jennifer, Candice, Vincent, Esther's Second Web Page and Melinda. Most of us are in this picture but not in order of names.