The following math problems were submitted by math educators for past blogs. We hope they will be helpful to teachers wanting to tie MLK facts into their regular curriculum:
1. On 25 March 1965, Martin Luther King led thousands of nonviolent demonstrators on a 5-day, 54-mile march from Selma, Alabama to the steps of the capitol in Montgomery, Alabama. According to the American College of Sports Medicine the average step length of an adult is 2.6 feet or about 31 inches. There are 5,280 feet in a mile.
Can you determine how many steps were taken by someone marching the entire distance from Selma to Montgomery Alabama? (To estimate, there are about 2000 steps in a mile)
ANSWER: 108,000 steps (estimated 109,662 (using 2.6 ft per step)
2. A court order restricted the number of marchers to 300 when passing over a stretch of two-lane highway. However, on the final day of the march, when the road reached four lanes the number of demonstrators swelled to 25,000.
How many additional marchers joined in after passing the two lane highway?
ANSWER: 24,700
3. Of the estimated 250,000 people who attended the March, about 60,000 were white. What percentage of the marchers were white?
ANSWER: 24%