If your students like cars, they'll love this project! When your showing them how to create their "exponential decay car-price" functions, you'll have the opportunity to show them the connection between radicals and rational exponents. As with the the Investment Project, students will need to use a Logarithm to solve for the number of years.
New for the 2024-25 school year, we'll be using the "Hook Lesson" for Exponential Decay & Radicals. We'll also suggest that teachers print out a poster-sized copy of the "Menu of Covariaton" and post it in the front of their classrooms.
Teacher Suggestions:
Day 1 - Introduce the project (you can use this video below) and give students class time on the computers to go car shopping! By the end of class, they should have all 3 car prices (new, 5 years old & 10 years old). Honors students should have 9 car prices (3 different models: new, 5 years old & 10 years old). You could assign the paper copy of the project or this "Google-Classroom Friendly" version. Here is a Teacher Example that you can post for students, as well.
(Optional, but great if time allows!) - Introduce and assign all 3 parts of the "Cool Car vs. IRA" Project and post in your Google classroom with this Teacher example