Coughlin High School Students Turn Party Favors into a Real Life Math

Coughlin High School Math students, under the direction of Calculus teacher, Gerald Gillis, turned a honeycomb party favor into a Volume of Revolutions Calculus experiment.

Once the party favor was chosen, it was sketched on the coordinate plane. Students then had to approximate the volume of their honeycomb (solid) by using volume by cross sections calculations. Then, they had to come up with an equation of best fit and use the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus to find the volume of the solid. Students then compared the results of these two methods to an approximation of the solid using a geometry formula. The experiment illustrated to students how calculus is utilized with everyday objects.