Celebrate Earth Day with these fun math problems. We’ve included problems of varying difficulty to challenge both your math intervention and enrichment students. Included are the best of those submitted to us in past years and some new ones as well. Enjoy!
- Almost 97% of the world’s water is salty or undrinkable, another 2% is locked away in the ice cap or glaciers. What percent is drinkable? (Submitted by Southfield School in Shreveport, LA)
- The average person uses about 12,000 gallons of water each year. Using this estimate, how much does your family use? How much does your class use?
- Recycling 1 aluminum can saves enough energy to run a TV for 3 hours. If your TV runs 84 hours this month how many aluminum cans should you recycle to produce the energy needed?
- It takes 90% less energy to recycle aluminum cans than to manufacture new ones. So, one thousand cans can be recycled using the same energy as making how many new ones?
- Recycling a stack of newspaper just 3 feet high saves one tree. How many trees are saved if our school collected and recycled 20 stacks of newspapers 6 feet high? (Submitted by Haughton High School, Haughton, LA)
- A leaky faucet can waste up to 20 gallons of water per day, and a leaking toilet can waste up to 200 gallons a day. If 3 leaky faucets and 2 leaking toilets were fixed today how many gallons of water would be saved each day.