Crazy, Gross, Icky Math (gr. 3-8)

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CRAZY, GROSS, ICKY MATH

(gr. 3-8)

Crazy, Gross, Icky Math! offers 55 fun and challenging multi-step math problems for upper elementary and middle school high-ability learners. Students explore bugs, slime, body facts, and other “ick” topics while practicing proportional reasoning, estimation, and problem solving.

CREEPY CRAWLIES & BUGS

A cockroach can live 9 days without its head. If a colony of 432 cockroaches loses their heads at a rate of 3 per day, how many headless cockroaches are alive after 1 week?
A flea can jump 200 times its body length. If a flea is 3 mm long, how many meters could a 1.8 m-tall human jump in “flea-proportion”?
A spider eats 2,000 mosquitoes a year. If your town has 6,500 spiders, how many mosquitoes disappear each day?
A dung beetle can push 1,141 times its own weight. If it weighs 50 g, how many pounds could a 150 lb human push with the same strength ratio?
An ant colony doubles its population every 4 days. If you start with 25 ants, how many after 28 days?

GROSS HUMAN FACTS

6. An adult human sheds 50,000 skin flakes per minute. How many pounds of skin would a person shed in 75 years, if 1,000,000 flakes = 1 g?

7. The average human produces 1.5 L of snot per day. How many gallons of snot does your 7th-grade class of 24 produce in a week?

8. If you lined up all the red blood cells you make in 1 day, they would stretch 62,000 miles. How many times around Earth (circumference ≈ 24,901 mi) is that?

9. Your stomach produces 2 L of acid per day. How many bathtubs (40 gal each) could you fill in a year?

10. Humans blink about 20 times per minute. If a blink lasts 0.3 s, how many hours of your life (80 years) are spent with your eyes closed?

ZOMBIE & MONSTER MATH

11. A zombie virus doubles its infected population every 6 hours. If 1 zombie bites someone at noon, how many zombies exist after 2 days?

12. A slime monster expands its goo 1.5× per hour. If it starts at 100 mL, when will it exceed a 55-gallon drum?

13. A vampire drinks 2.5 L of blood per night. How many people (≈5 L of blood each) does it need to bite in a month without repeats?

14. A werewolf howls every 7.5 minutes. How many howls in 9 hours of a full moon?

15. A mummy loses 2% of its wrappings per hour. Starting with 200 ft of cloth, how many feet remain after 24 hours?

DISGUSTING ANIMALS & BODILY FUNCTIONS

16. A blue whale poops 52,000 lb of feces per year. How many school buses (≈24,000 lb each) is that in 3 years?

17. A cow burps 500 L of methane per day. How many party balloons (11 L each) could you fill in a year with 4 cows?

18. A python can eat prey ¼ of its body weight. How many 2 lb rats can a 120 lb python eat at once?

19. Termites can eat wood at 0.0003 ft³ per termite per day. How long to eat a 1,500 ft³ log cabin with 1 million termites?

20. A person passes gas 14 times per day. How many farts does a school of 400 students release in a 180-day year?

GROSS FOOD & DECOMPOSITION

21. Bread mold doubles in size every 12 hours. If it starts as a 1 cm² spot, how large after 5 days?

22. If a sandwich attracts 3 flies per minute, how many flies visit if it’s left out 2 hours?

23. A 1‑inch cube of cheese has 90 billion bacteria. How many bacteria in a 6×6×6 inch block?

24. A compost pile loses 5% of its mass per week. If you start with 400 lb of food waste, how many pounds remain after 8 weeks?

25. A fruit fly lives 40 days. How many generations could you raise in a year if each generation starts the next?

BLOOD, GUTS, & PARASITES

26. A leech can drink 10× its body weight in blood. How many ounces can 5 leeches (3 oz each) consume?

27. There are 2,000 mites in your eyelashes. If they multiply 15% per day, how many in 10 days?

28. If a mosquito drinks 5 mg of blood per bite, how many bites remove 1 pint (≈473 g)?

29. A tapeworm can grow 2 ft per month. How long in a year?

30. If your body has 30 trillion cells and 39 trillion bacteria, what is the bacteria-to-human-cell ratio?

WEIRD WORLD RECORDS

31. The longest tapeworm found in a human was 82 ft. How many average 5.5 ft 4th graders could it stretch across?

32. The largest pizza ever weighed 26,883 lb. If 1 slice is 0.5 lb, how many slices was that?

33. A snail moves 0.03 mph. How many days to cross a 0.5 mi road?

34. The largest burp was 110.9 dB. If each burp decreases by 2 dB per hour, how loud after 8 hours?

35. The longest fingernails totaled 29 ft. If cut into 2‑inch pieces, how many pieces?

"EWWW" ENVIRONMENTAL MATH

36. If 1 rat can reproduce 2 litters of 8 pups per month, how many rats from 1 pair in 6 months (no deaths)?

37. A landfill grows by 4,000 tons of trash per day. How many pounds is that per minute?

38. If a buzzard eats 1 lb of carrion per day, how many buzzards to clean a 600 lb deer in 2 days?

39. A swamp evaporates 3,000 gal per day. How long to empty a 2 acre swamp 2 ft deep?

40. Maggots eat 60% of a carcass in 4 days. How many pounds of a 120 lb deer remain?

OOZES, SLIMES, & GELS

41. A slug produces 0.5 g of slime per hour. How much slime from 200 slugs in 3 days?

42. A slime mold can grow 4 cm per hour. How far in 3 days?

43. A jellyfish is 95% water. If it dries to 1 lb, how heavy was it alive?

44. If a snail trail is 1 mm thick and 2 cm wide, how much volume is left after 25 ft of crawling?

45. A 10 g blobfish inflates to 40 g underwater. What % is water weight?

MATH WITH EXTREME DECAY

46. A skeleton loses 0.5 lb of mass per 100 years. How long to lose 3 lb?

47. If a pumpkin rots 15% per day, what fraction remains after 10 days?

48. A skull rolling at 2 ft/s takes how long to roll 1 mile?

49. If a bat colony leaves 30 lb of guano per week, how much in a year?

50. If a haunted house has 75 cobwebs and spiders spin 2 new webs per night, how many webs after 30 days if 10 are cleaned weekly?

BONUS "ICKY MATH CHALLENGE"

51. You collect pond water with 1,000 paramecia per drop. How many microorganisms are in a 1 L bottle (≈20,000 drops)?

52. A fly can lay 500 eggs in 3 days. How many eggs from 12 flies in 2 weeks?

53. A cemetery of 5,000 graves loses 0.1 inch of soil per year to erosion. How many cubic feet lost in 25 years if each grave is 3×7 ft?

54. A human sneezes 40 mph, traveling 30 ft. If 5 sneezes happen every 10 minutes in a 60‑minute class, how many “sneeze‑feet” fly?

55. If 1 rat produces 25,000 droppings per year, how many for a colony of 38 rats in 6 months?

Need the answers? Contact RESTORE Instructional Coach David Privett at dprivett@esu2.org.

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