The Ultimate Road Trip

When it comes to road trips there are many places to go, a drive around Canada or go through South America, but none of those excite me like my ultimate road trip does; a full trip around Iceland seems like the best way to spend a week in a car, so thats exactly where I was going. However, there was a lot more to it than just going on a road trip, we had to plan out everything, from hotels to gas prices to the things we wanted to do, all with a budget of $10,000. The driving question which would get us started was “how can we model changes over time?” We all set to work with a blurry idea of where we want to go and from there, we’d see where the road took us.

The first step in having our dream road trip was choosing our vehicle, my first idea was to have a relaxing drive in Europe while driving a Ferrari but I soon thought that Iceland would bring a more adventurous journey. I had to pick a car that was cheap because I wanted to have as much money as possible to spend on activities, I also needed to consider the terrain in Iceland and a Ferrari really wouldn’t suit that; so I decided to keep it simple and go with a 2019 Volkswagen Polo.

We then moved on to arguably the most important part, milestone two and three which was math practice. As we had to keep track of our spendings and show them in a way that answers the driving question, we needed to understand linear relations. The way we learnt this was from a textbook and once we had a good understanding, it was time for a short quiz to test our knowledge. 

The time had come where we had to do the most annoying and tedious part, making a budget listing all of the things we did, I organized my expenses in four different categories, one time expenses, hotels, car rental/gas, and food. Once my whole table was complete, I reached a grand total of $9,936.66 which if you asked me, is very good. I had to make sure I didn’t go over the $10,00 given and I did exactly that. 

Now that we knew how much we were spending, we had to create a graph that shows the cost of each day. To keep it simple we used an app called “desmos” that makes the graph for us, it was really easy to use and very effective. The formula we used to get an accurate representation of the cost per day was “y= mx + b.” The “y” representing the total cost of each day, “m” meaning my daily expenses, “x” being the number of days, and the “b” meaning my one time costs. Making my formula y= 334x + 7183. If I carried on the trip for twenty days instead of eight, that would cost $14,063 and if I extended it it even longer for 100 days, it would cost $41,583. And if for some reason I was in Iceland for a whole year it would cost me a grand total of $132,743.

Competencies Being Assessed:

Reasoning and Analyzing: I feel that I showed an extended learning in this competency because I made a spreadsheet that effectively shows all my expenses for the trip. I also made it easy to read and everything on it is accurate. 

Connecting and Reflecting: Throughout this project I think I showed my best work on this competency because I took the time to get my grand total as close to $10,000 as possible. I also made sure that I went on a road trip unique to me and I did the things that I would actually want to do in my life. 

Communicating and Representing: This final competency’s sole focus was math. I do not think I showed an extended learning but I met the criteria. I used the app desmos to its best ability and properly showed the total cost for a range of days. Everything is properly labeled on the graph and easy to read. 

To conclude my final Scimatics project, I feel I did quite well on this. I also really enjoyed it because of the amount of freedom available. I like math more than science so this project was something that suited my strengths as a learner. Although budgeting isn’t the most interesting at times I feel a sense of satisfaction when it is fully complete. Despite the fact that this was a very short project, I really enjoyed it and would like to do something like it again. 

Thanks Mr. Gross for a great Scimatics Year!