Pack It All Up

To watch our presentation video click here

Throughout the Pack It Up project, my group and I had endured many challenges, failures and at the end, success. Now with the Pack it Up project over, I have time to reflect on the process of creating our shapes, working as a group and presenting to other people our final product.

Thinking about the way we design and produce a package is a very complicated process. In our project, our group began with a basic understanding of what we needed to package and also what are goal for the packages were. Waste minimum space. That is how we started visualizing what we wanted. After that process of visualizing we were able to put our image from our head to the computer on a program called Google Sketch Up. The part that comes after this, was definitely the hardest part of the whole process. We had to add correct measurement, dimensions and tabs to a net of the shape. It took us a many tries to get our measurements perfect and insert our tabs correctly for all three of our nets, however, I think the time we put into the creation of the net was well worth it. After the  net process, came the building phase. When building, we saw mistakes of the net and were able to improve them (This also took a couple times to get right). In the end, we had to put all of the measurements (Surface Area, volume, total cost) and pictures of nets, Google Sketchs and our final designs into one presentation that we presented to the class.

“How does failure help us succeed?” That question is asked a lot, especially in math. When you don’t do as well on a test or a quiz, you ask to yourself “What can I learn from my mistakes and failure?” I believe their is only one answer to this question. To learn from your mistakes you must keep improving and trying. Throughout the Pack It Up project our group endured many failures from getting the correct measurements and building our package properly. When we were building the triangular prism, we noticed that the measurements that we had used were all incorrect. However, with a bit more thinking and help from our teachers we were able to complete the triangular prism. We also came across failure when building the cylinder. Just like our mistake in the triangular prism, we had to change all the measurements and build the shape multiple times.  Overall, failure does help us to succeed because without failure there would be no success.

The Credit Card Illusion

 

*Click Image to see a Larger Image*

Credit Cards? Well, the only thing you need to know about Credit Card is that they can be useful when needed. Most of the time. However, Credit Cards are not as simple as the bank website shows them as…

By using the spreadsheet program we learned that formulas are very valuable and useful to the consumers of credit cards. It is user friendly, and within ten minutes you will be able to tell what credit card suites you the best. Formulas avoid the hassle of calculating the amounts due and how long it will take to pay of your debt and interest.  With a simple press of a couple buttons you are able to see the type of credit card you want.  By running the different scenarios on the spreadsheet, you could see that paying bills with different amounts would take longer periods of time. For example, if you paid off all of your debt in a month, you would have none left to pay and you would have to pay no interest. However, if you pay small amounts of money ever month it showed how long it took to pay off your amount due with the interest. Depending on the type of person you are, paying your bills immediately or laying them out over a couple of months is all up to the consumer.

A Credit Card is the ability to buy something with the promise to pay later. Credit cards allow consumers to purchase expensive items without having to save up the money. The purchase can be charged and paid off over time. This greater purchasing power is also handy in an emergency. For example, a credit card can be used to pay for unexpected expenses such as medical bills, dental work or car repairs that would be too expensive to pay in cash. They can even boost a user’s credit rating if used responsibly. However, Credit Cards are not as simple and user “Friendly” as they might seem.  If you were a new student at University, a credit card could be the wrong choice. If you accumulate a credit card balance, you will owe interest on the debt. Missing a credit card payments, will impact your credit score. It will cause it to go down and if you carry a high balance on a credit card, it can cause problems in the future. Throughout our unit with credit cards we learned about APR or annual percentage rate. Otherwise, an APR is the percentage of interest that is charged for debt growth.  Besides APR, interest also seems to play huge role in the credit card industry.  Interest is the fee charged when you don’t pay enough money to restore your debt. Interest increase very time you don’t pay your debt. This will be a huge problem when you don’t pay your money to restore your debt. If I had to give advice to a new consumer to the credit card market, I would tell them to use the credit card wisely. Know your balance, stick with your payments, and avoid unnecessary purchases. Lastly, be careful with the illusion of the money you don’t have.