Two young mathematicians discuss tossing pizza dough.
- Devyn
- Hey Riley, do you know what I love?
- Riley
- Calculus?
- Devyn
- And pizza! Last night I made my own pizza crust from scratch!
- Riley
- Mmmmmmm. Calculus.
- Devyn
- I know! The best part of making the crust is tossing it. But during my pizza tossing, I noticed something. The dough is basically a cylinder with a radius that is expanding, and a height that is getting smaller. Then I started wondering: how are those two rates related?
- Riley
- Pizza. So delicious. So cheesy. So calculus.
The problem above is an example of a related rates word problem. To solve it, we will need the tools in the Dig-In. For now, let’s see if we can reason through some questions related to this problem.