More Grocery Shrinking Options

There has to be a volume problem/project in here. The setup: you work for some company that wants to cut costs by shrinking its product... but you don't want the consumer to know. Consider 3 options for shrinking the product without making it too different:

• Change the shape of the packaging (box 1 in the comic above). Needs to be a change that's subtle enough that someone won't notice. Could be totally dramatic (changing rectangular package to a cylinder or frustrum). Could be subtle (shave a little bit off here, a little bit off here, no one will notice). Could be sneaky (when bottle manufacturers make the bottom of the bottle not flat).
• Make the actual product smaller (upper right box in the comic above). Seriously, how much could you save by making the holes in cheerios or bagels bigger? 
• Filling the package with something else (the ice cream gnome above). Less ice cream, more toys!

I wonder what givens you'd need to give kids to start with and how open-ended it actually could/should be. I would love for kids to actually build their packages so that they could show why it's a sneaky change!

(Yes, this is teaching kids to be corporate scammers, but hey, preparation for the real world, right? Maybe it will also teach them to be suspicious of corporate scammers!)

Russian Stacking Dolls

Proportional reasoning meets volume, maybe? There have gotta be some connections between growth factors in 1, 2, and 3-dimensions. 

Also, just some cool pattern finding and different methods for problem solving.

http://blog.mrmeyer.com/?p=10211&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+dydan1+%28dy%2Fdan+posts+%2B+lessons%29

100 times the bigger?

http://blog.mrmeyer.com/?p=9173

Orbeez (little toys) purport to grow to 100 times the volume. What does it mean for something to be 100 times bigger? What kinds of measurements would you predict for something to be 100 times bigger? Is it misleading to just talk about volume?

XL Wine Glass

http://www.amazon.com/DCI-10040-XL-Wine-Glass/dp/B000VKOK6O

"Holds a full bottle of wine!"

Hmm... why does this look so much smaller than a real wine glass? Is there really that little wine in a bottle? Is this glass really that big? How could we find out?

"Large" and "Small" Beer Cups

http://deadspin.com/5728087/the-great-qwest-field-beer-scandal-of-2011

A large beer costs $1.25 more than a small beer, but they hold the same amount.

Qwest Field responds:
http://www.seahawks.com/news/articles/article-1/First--Goal-statement-regarding-beer-cup-size/c9b409ac-be93-4e80-8b7e-24dcc4cc49e3

The real question is: how is it that these cups look like they're different sizes but actually hold the same amount of liquid. There's gotta be a problem in there about what kinds of constraints on height and diameter are enough/too much to allow the cups to "look" different sizes. E.g. how small of a diameter would make the small cup look like the big cup?

Grocery Shrink Ray

Dan Meyer's ideas on groceries...
http://blog.mrmeyer.com/?p=8713

... all came from The Consumerist website
http://consumerist.com/

So many ideas here:
-Obviously, proportional reasoning re: money
-There should be lots with different levels of math. Calc kids can look at oddly shaped bottles.

Buildings Shaped Like What They Sell

http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/74157

Definitely something awesome for the proportional reasoning or 1-2-3-D growth units.

How much of the glass will it fill?

http://blog.mrmeyer.com/?p=4276

A can of soda will fill how much of each glass?