Math Attack Weekly

Friday, May 10, 2013

Keep the Future Bright, Turn Off That Light!

Over this school year of 2012-2013, Ms. Lemoss advanced math classes have been working on reducing their electricity usage or water usage in a variety of ways. They have done many projects based on this data and are on their nal project.
This year, Me and my family have been working on reducing our electricity usage. So far we have gone from over 8900 Kwh to less than 5000 kilowatts a month. But how did we do it? Over the school year we have been trying to become more involved with after-school activities, mainly because my parents forced me and my brothers to, but we have also limited our computer usage, gone to bed earlier, and turned off the lights during the day and when we go to bed. We also turn up the A/C during the day so that it doesnt use as much electricity, we have also chosen to do more adventuring as my parents call it on Sunday. After church in the morning, we go to a restaurant or catch a movie at KLCC or Pavilion. By then its nearly 4 or 5 P.M. and then we head home for the rest of the day. After we stop playing video games and other things at 7 and watch a movie and get ready for bed. Since computers are like little T.V.s, and normally my brothers, my father, my mother sometimes, and I are on the computer during the weekend, it makes a big difference when we turn the computers off at 7 and watch a movie, which brings it down to only 2 or 3 electronic devices that are on after 7. Now onto the math. For Slope-Intercept form, it is y = mx + b, m is the slope, which is 143. I got this by looking at the graph, finding how many months it takes to go down 1000 Kwh, which is 1000, the rise, and 7, the run. First 1000 needs to be negative, since it is a decrease. To find the slope, I divide -1000 by 7, which ends up to be -142.85714, so I round it to -143. Then I plug this into the equation and the new equation is y = -143x + b. Now to find b. B is an easy variable to find, since all you have to do is find where the line starts, and then you get b, and in this case, it would be 7250. And now when we plug this in, we get y = -143x + 7250. Now to find how long it will take for my family to get to 300 Kwh. To do this, we put 300 for y, which is the desired yaxis, so now we must solve 300 = -143x + 7250. To do this I first subtract 7250 from 300, and the 7250 turns to a negative and the answer for that is -6950, and now the equation is -6950 = -143x. Now I divide -6950 by -143 and get 48.6 = x, 48.6 is positive because a negative divided by a negative is a positive. So now we have our answer; 48.6 = x, which is 48.6 months, since x is when the line will be at 300 on 1 the y axis. So it will take my family 48.6 months to reach 300 Kilowatts a month. That seems about right.