Real-Life Math
You are out on the ski slope with a new crop of beginning students.
You've covered many of the basic techniques, and it shows. The students
are doing pretty well!
You're watching one student as he comes
down the hill. He's pushing things a bit too hard. Suddenly, he loses
control and goes down in a pretty spectacular wipeout. The other
students are impressed! They clap while you hustle on over.
The student
is fine, even though he's splayed out all over the mountain. He struggles
to get up, which is hard for him since his skis are still attached to his
feet.
This is a problem -- the skis are supposed to come off when someone
falls! If the skis stay on during a fall, it can mean broken bones and torn
ligaments for the skier. This student was lucky.
"Who adjusted your
bindings?" you ask the student. (The bindings are what connect the ski boot
to the ski. They release the boot from the ski in a fall. They must be adjusted
for each individual skier.)
"What do you mean?" he asks. "I just borrowed
my buddy's gear. He's a great skier! He was out of town for a few
days and said I could borrow the stuff."
Now you understand why the
bindings didn't release when your student fell down -- they were adjusted
for a better skier. Experienced skiers use tighter bindings.
You explain
to the student that the bindings have to be adjusted to suit him. They have
to be adjusted for his weight and for his level of ability.
"Go down
to the ski shop, and tell them you need to have your bindings adjusted. Tell
them you are a beginner and your weight -- how much do you weigh?" you ask.
The
student tells you that he weighs 180 pounds. You want to convert that into
metric because you know the ski shop prefers working in metric. Figure out
how much he weighs in kilograms and tell him to pass that information on to
the ski shop.
Remember, 2.2 pounds is the same as 1 kilogram. Or, put
another way, 1 pound equals 0.45 kilograms.