Real-Life Math
From the very first model that you built when you were nine years old, you've known that you wanted to make models for a living. Naturally, you took a design and engineering program in college and you've apprenticed under other professional model makers every chance you get.
Although it's not your favorite subject, you use math on a daily basis, and you're pretty good with the basic calculations that you have to make.
You're building a scale model of a dinosaur skeleton for the science museum in your area. This is a part of your job that you enjoy doing, but it is time-consuming. And you don't get to the really fun part until you get past the initial calculations that will tell you how big you need to make the model.
You've been to the Smithsonian Institution to view the real skeleton they have on display there, and you've taken pictures from every angle. You've even spent a lot of time working on the details that will make the smaller model of the skeleton look real.
Now it's time to scale the actual size of the dinosaur down to something more manageable. The museum wants to use a model that is 1/12 the size of the original skeleton for an upcoming exhibit they have planned. To determine what the scale size would be, you measured the real skeleton when you were viewing the original.
The original skeleton was 24 feet tall at the highest point and 21 feet tall at the lowest point. It was 43 feet from the tip of the horn on its nose to the tip of its tail. You also measured the leg length, and found that all 4 legs were 12 feet tall.
Now all you need to do is scale the model down to size. How would you do that? And how large would your model be when you've completed the scaled down model?
"There's math involved in what we do every day," says John Geigle, a model maker. "It's mostly basic algebra, and there are lots of measurements and a large amount of scaling that we do."