Think about the amount of water you use when you take a shower. Do you think you use 10 gallons, 100 gallons, or somewhere in between?
You can do a simple experiment to find out. Click below to watch Noreen as she discovers how much water she uses in an average shower. After watching, keep reading below and answer the question.
Keyboard Shortcut | Action |
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Space | Pause/Play video playback |
Enter | Pause/Play video playback |
m | Mute/Unmute video volume |
Up and Down arrows | Increase and decrease volume by 10% |
Right and Left arrows | Seek forward or backward by 5 seconds |
0-9 | Fast seek to x% of the video. |
f | Enter or exit fullscreen. (Note: To exit fullscreen in flash press the Esc key. |
c | Press c to toggle captions on or off |
Shower Estimation
Rather than running the shower for 10 minutes and measuring all of that water, Noreen measures how much water comes out of the shower in half a minute. She knows that there are two half minutes in one minute, so she multiplies by 2 to calculate how much water she used in 1 minute. Finally, because she wants to know how much water she used in 10 minutes, she multiplies by 10.
If Noreen had let the water run for 2 minutes instead of half a minute, do you think she would still find that she used 320 cups of water during her 10-minute shower? Think about the math calculations she would have to do in that situation. Explain your answer in two to three sentences.