This is a pretty quick and easy experiment that children who are working with the Pythagorean Theorem and the formula D=rt would find fun and interesting.

First, find an escalator. Measure the base and the height, so you can calculate the hypotenuse (the step distance.) Remember that the escalator is not a perfect triangle, so try to estimate as best you can where to extend your measurements.

Now get out a stopwatch and time yourself going up and down. Do this a few times, and get an average of your numbers.

You should now have the distance and the time in order to figure out the rate of the escalator.

As an example, I'll tell you what I did. The measurement of the base was 363 inches, the height was 208 inch, and the hypotenuse was 418.37 inches, as shown below.

To get the hypotenuse, I squared the base and height numbers and added them together. Remember, the sum will be the square of the hypotenuse, which means you need the square root of this number.

Now for the rate. The average time I used was 22.54 seconds. So, I divided the distance by the time. That is 418.37/22.54 = 18.56 in/sec.

If you want to go to miles per hour then do the necessary converions of 60 seconds per minute, 60 minutes per hour, 12 inches per feet, and 5280 feet per mile.

That is (18.56 * 60 * 60)/(12 * 5280) = 1.05 mph. So the escalator I was on was only going approximately 1 mph.

Well, I hope you can do this experiment yourself. Have some fun with it!

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