Here is a fun experiment for Junior High School students to get your brains working mathamatically.

All you need for this experiment is a stopwatch or clock to keep time, a piece of paper,a pencil, and some measuring tape.

Get into groups of two and take turns hoing up and down the escalator, making a total of six too eight trips.
While time recodings are being made, have a few people take the measurementswith the tape measurer.
First, make a measurement along the base of the escalator, going all the way across to were the escalator ends above.
Next, go to the top of the excalator and measure from top to bottom.

After each trip up and down the escalator, make sure to record the time.
After sharing the times with the rest of the class, find the average time.

When I tried this experiment, I took all the times, added them together,
and then divided them by the number of times I added together.

The next step in this experiment is to find the distance of the escalator.
To find the distance use the pathagorean theorum (a*a + b*b=c*c). Simply take
the measurements and plug them into the formula. When you find the answer, then
that's the distance of the escalator stairs.

The next step is to find the average apeed of the escalator. Take the distance of c,
(the average time) and plug it into this formula: D=RT. This answer will be in inches per second.
You can also plug in the distances of a and b to find other rates as well.

Next, you can convert the time from seconds per minute to miles per hour by doing
these steps: ?inches * 1mile * 60 seconds * 60 minutes/seconds * 5280 feet * 1 minute * 1 hour
Everything should cancel except for mile and hour.

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's First and Third Web Page, Jill, Nanyal, Kevin, Crystal, Rachel, Christina, Jennifer, Candice, Vincent, Esther and Melinda. Most of us are in this picture but not in order of names.