MathsGenStatsYr11

In the following activity you will be looking at the price of a McDonald's Big Mac in various countries around the world. Part of the topic that we are currently doing involves graphing and data analysis. In the following activity you will compare the prices of the Big Mac in various countries around the world.

From this copy and paste at least 5 facts about McDonald's. Create a Word document for this and save it to your home folder. This will need to be printed and submitted for marking.

To find out the price of a Big Mac around the world click here You should see the following,

This table gives the price of a Big Mac in the local currency of the particular country, as shown in the Domestic Price column. For example, in Argentina the price is shown as 2.95 Argentinean Pesos. For a comparison with other countries of the world we need to convert this to some common currency. We will choose the Australian Dollar. For this exercise you can ignore the Exchange Rate column and the other columns.

You will note that the price for Australia is currently not correct. We will make the correction later

Your next task is to use Excel to calculate the value of a Big Mac in Australian Dollars in at least 10 other countries around the world. You might like to choose your countries as blocks. For example you could compare neighbouring European countries or some developing countries vs developed countries, etc., etc. To look at maps of various parts of the World click here.

Your spreadsheet should look like the following, Copy the data into the spreadsheet. The Domestic Price refers to the cost of the hamburger in that particular country in the currency of that country. Remember you will need to choose 10 countries.

By clicking here you will be able to access an exchange rate calculator. What you need to do here is to convert each Domestic Price to its value in A$ (Australian Dollars). Set up the conversion as shown below. The example here shows the conversion of US$2.51 to Australian dollars.

The 3.26823 value is now copied to your spreadsheet. You must convert the Domestic Price, in the each country concerned, to the price in Australian Dollars.

Once you have completed at least 10 countries, you will need to create a column graph to show your results. The column graph will have the name of the country on the horizontal and the cost of the Big Mac in Australian Dollars on the vertical. Your graph should be displayed as a New Sheet.

To do this proceed as follows. Highlight column A, then with the Ctrl keyboard button pressed select the appropriate part of column C. Click the graphing icon from the menu bar and create your column graph. Work carefully through the Graphing Wizard choosing appropriate options. Remember your graph will require an appropriate name and will need to have the axes appropriately labelled. You should set different colours for each of the columns.

You will need to print your summary sheet of McDonald's and the graph. You need to answer the folowing question as well - What do you notice about the price of a McDonald's Big Mac in various countries around the world - are there any patterns? These sheets must be handed in for marking.

In the following activity you will use a computer simulation to determine the density of a variety of objects. You will also examine the factors that determine whether an object will sink or float.

You can grab an object by holding the mouse over it. You can then drag the object to either of your tools: the graduated cylinder, which measures water displacement and thus volume, (note the sophisticated thumb tack that holds things underwater at the time) and the scale, measuring mass. The graduated cylinder measures the volume in millilitres and the scale measures the mass of the object in grams.

Open an Excel spreadsheet. Your task is now to move each of the objects to the scale and the measuring cylinder in turn. Record the mass of the object and the displaced volume of the object on a spreadsheet. Your spreadsheet should be set up as follows. This table can be copied and pasted directly into your spreadsheet

Description	Mass (g)	Volume (ml)	Density (g/ml)
Blue Square
Blue Triangle
Red Square
Red Oval
Pink Square
Purple Oval
Green Triangle
Grey Triangle
Tan Rectangle
Red/Black Rectangle

Your next task is to determine the density of the object. To do this we will write a formula on the spreadsheet to allow this quantity to be determined.

Density is defined as the mass of an object divided by its volume. The usual units are kg for mass and cubic metres for volume. In our simulation we have mass measured in grams (g) and volume measured in millilitres (ml).

Copy this formula down all appropriate cells of column D. Your next task is to convert the g/mL values to kg/m³

To do this conversion you will firstly need to convert grams to kilograms, then you will need to convert mL to m³

Check your maths book to help you with this conversion. Or you can type the following into a Google search. - grams per millilitre to kilograms per cubic metre, and the conversion factor will appear. Write a formula in cell E2 to change the grams per mL to kg per cubic metre.

Your next task is to arrange the objects in order of increasing density, either according to column D or column E. To do this we will use the Sort function associated with Excel. Select the table including the header row, see below,

When you select the Sort button the following dialog box appears. Choose the options as shown below.

Your next task is to use the simulation to determine how you can predict what will float and what will sink.

On the simulation screen set the density of the liquid to 1.0. This is actually the density of water. Note that the units shown here are g/cc. One cc - cubic centimetre is the same as one millilitre (mL)

Drag the objects one by one into the liquid. If the object sinks place a - sign in the next available column of your spreadsheet. On the other hand if the object floats place a + sign.

Q1) What relationship appears to exist between the density of the object and the density of the fluid it is placed in with respect to whether the object floats or sinks.

Set the density scale to the lowest possible value, 0.1. Drag all of the objects into the liquid. Slowly increase the density of the liquid. When an object floats to the surface record the minimum value of the density of the liquid on your spreadsheet.

Copland College

Applying Statistics