Twice at month at Emmanuel we have 'Maths for Life' together as a school. We consider how concepts we learn about in Maths relate to real life situations that we are learning about in our topic.
This week we've been learning about the quarries of Oxford and some of the buildings which they built. If you haven't seen it yet, watch this video which visits some of the quarries in Headington which supplied limestone for the buildings in Oxford.
Today we are going to estimate how many buildings could be built from one of the quarries in Headington, Magdalen Quarry. You can find this behind some garages on William Kimber Crescent.
You can follow the problem in our video, 'Maths for Life Rocks'
Once you've followed through the task on the video, you could try these bonus questions:
One cubic metre of limestone weighs 2711 kilograms.
If 1000 kilograms of limestone is a ‘load’, how many cubic metres are in a load?
If you read this webpage , it says that building New College Tower required 1386 loads.
How many cubic metres of limestone were needed? How many 'Glebe lands' of quarry would be needed to make this tower?
We’re told that it cost on average 5d (five old pennies) to transport one load of limestone into the centre of Oxford. How much would it cost to transport the rock for New College Tower to Oxford?