Giant Soup Can of Hornby Island

 I have put a picture of my calculations and following that there is a description of my rationale. 

I started this problem by considering the average size of a women's bike, after some research I realized that the height of an average bike is hard to find on the internet, and usually you can only find the length of the frame. The frame of a bike for a woman between 5'3 and 5'5 would be 71 cm (Hudson, 2022), from there I guessed that the total height could be 100 cm. 

From the picture, the diameter of the tank looked to be about 3 times the height of the bike, so I estimated that the diameter of the tank to be 300 cm. From some more research, I found that the average bike length is 175 cm (Ellis, 2022). In the picture, the height (or length as written in my work) of the tank looks to be about twice the length of the bicycle, so I estimated the length of the tank to be 350 cm. 

At this point, I wanted to make sure my calculations were comparable to that of a regular soup can, so I took ratios of both the tank and can (height to diameter) and compared them. They were very similar, only about .3 of a decimal difference!

My next step was to calculate the volume of the tank which ended up being 24.74 m^3. Now I wanted to see if this would be enough to put out a house fire. Through some research, I found out that you need 400 gallons per minute of water to fight a house fire (Smith, 2010). I then converted my volume into gallons to find out that the tank can fight a house fire for about 15 minutes. Once again, based off of some research, I found out that it takes about 20-40 minutes to fight a house fire (Chase, n.d.). So, if there was a small fire, the tank would have enough water to fight it. 

My student bird struggled with this problem because this was really new territory for me, while I understand all the mathematics behind the problem, I have never applied it in this manner and it was a new experience for me. 

However, my teacher bird enjoyed this problem because it made me think critically, problem solve, and apply my skills outside of the box. I think this would be an excellent puzzle for students who need an academic challenge or as a problem of the week where the class would discuss and solve it together. 

Extension: 

Here is a sculpture in downtown Calgary, a head you can stand inside of! A problem I would pose to my students could be, given my height 5'1 and the average size of a human skull, what are the dimensions of the sculpture? I would give the students a picture where I am standing inside the sculpture (I just don't have one at this moment!) so they could reference off my height.   

References: 

Chase. (n.d.). How Long Does It Take To Put Out a House Fire? https://firefighterinsider.com/how-long-put-out-house-fire/

Ellis, C. (2022, August 20). What size shed do I need for my bikes? | The Best Bike Lock. The Best Bike Lock. https://thebestbikelock.com/bike-storage-ideas/best-bike-storage-shed/what-size-shed-for-bikes/

Hudson, A. N. (2022). Rutland Cycling. Rutland Cycling. https://www.rutlandcycling.com/pages/sizing-guide/

P. Smith, J. (2010, December 1). Needed Fire Flow. Firehouse. https://www.firehouse.com/home/article/10465153/determining-how-much-water-is-needed-for-effective-fire-control