Problem of the Month: October 2021

This October, our students will tackle ACES’s original “Athlete Health” curriculum unit. In addition to learning about goal setting and perseverance (two key social-emotional skills), our 6th grade students will use reasoning about multiplication and division to solve ratio and rate problems. Get a sneak peek at what they’ll be working on by trying your hand at the October Problem of the Month!

In football, the fastest running average is held by wide receivers. On average, wide receivers can run the 40-yard dash in 4.48 seconds. If a wide receiver runs at this exact rate and doesn’t slow down, how long will it take for the player to run 100 yards? Scroll down to see the solution!

The wide receiver runs 40 yards in 4.48 seconds. Written as a rate, this is:
4.48/40

We simplify the fraction as follows:
4.48 seconds / 40 yards
= 448 seconds /4000 yards
=14 seconds / 125 yards

This shows that the wide receiver can run 125 yards in 14 seconds. Now we want to find out how long it will take the running back to run 100 yards. We multiply the rate above by the distance covered.

 (14 seconds / 125 yards) * 100 yards = 11.2 seconds

Thus, it will take the wide receiver 11.2 seconds to run 100 yards.