In math 9 PLP we just finished our latest project called “The Illest Road Trip Of All Time”. It’s where you use math to calculate an epic road trip and its costs. First you choose which car you will be renting and find out its cost per day and its miles per gallon and then you chose which type of hotel you will be sleeping in, either luxury, economy, or campground and find out it’s price.
Your starting location and ending location for the road trip must be in New York City, and the trip can go anywhere you want as long as your wheels are on the ground at all times. Which means no flying, no boating, and no trains. First I chose my vehicle, I chose a Penske semi truck with a sleeper cab because it would allow me to sleep in the truck and completely eliminates the cost of lodging or hotels.
Next I had to choose my route. I chose to have a multi destination trip, first I would drive to Albuquerque, New Mexico and then drive North to Vancouver, British Columbia. I then
calculated how many miles the trip would be.
The total length of the trip turned out to be 10,461 miles. Now to find out how much money I would have to spend on gas I had to divide the total MPG of my truck by the amount of miles in my trip, the gallons I needed ended up being 1,610 gallons. Next to find out the price of the total amount of gas I would need for the trip I had to multiply the 1,610 gallons by the average price of gas which was $2.80. After I did the math the total price for gas turned out to cost $4,508.
I know, that’s a lot of money. The total amount of money that had to be spent during the trip was a minimum of $9,500 and a maximum of $10,000 so I know had to figure out how many days I would have to be on my trip for my cost of the trip to be within the guidelines. After I did the math it turned out that I would have to be on the trip for 20 days costing me a total of $9,908! I then created a graph to visually compare the amount of money I would spen on vehicle rental and gas each day.
I was also offered a sponsorship deal with either Coca-Cola, Pepsi, or Snapple. I developed an equation to find out which brand would make me the most money. It turns out with my 20 day trip, the Pepsi sponsorship deal would make me the most money.
I finally finished figuring the prices out. And $9,908 spent over 20 days or $270 a day is the total amount of money I would have to spend on Food, Gas, and Vehicle rental. I personally really enjoyed this project, It incorporated a fun and interesting concept while still learning new types of math and figuring out different costs. I would love for other projects to be like this because I really enjoyed it!