How slowly can you ride a bike without touching the ground?

1. Fill in the names of your teammates on the Slow Bicycle Race Data Chart on the next page.
   
2. Each person will ride a bike through a track three times in a row. The track is a rectangle about 6 meters long and 60 centimeters wide. You have to ride the bike through the track as slowly as
   you can.
   
3. Use a stopwatch to time how long each ride takes:
   
4. Start the timer when the bike’s back tire enters the track
5. Stop the timer when the bike’s back tire leaves the track or if the rider’s foot touches the ground
6. Record the time of each ride on the Slow Bicycle Race Data Chart. Remember, each person
   gets three turns in a row. Make certain that you record everyone’s times.
   
7. How can you tell which team won? Since the slowest team wins, you’ll need to calculate how
   slow your team went. To do that, you need to know:
   
8. How far your team went
   
9. How much time your team took to go that far
   
10. Use the data you collected and the Team Results Chart to help you calculate your team’s speed.

Slow Bicycle Race Data Chart

Let's make a graph!

Directions: Create a bar graph to show each team’s average speed.

This is an activity in which students compute the speed at which they rode a bicycle.

Objectives:

In this activity students will:

• work in teams
• ride a bicycle as slowly as possible
• use a stopwatch to measure time
• record data
• use multiplication and addition to determine team’s total distance and time
• use division to calculate team’s average speed
• compare average speed with other teams to determine which team was the slowest
• create a bar graph to depict each team’s average speed

Questions to Ask:

1. What was the most difficult part about riding the bike?
2. What happens to the speed as the time increases?
3. What happens to the speed as the time decreases?