Scale Cars

Sunday, 23 November 2014 | 1 Comment

Matchbox cars, specifically that brand, have a scale written underneath.

I've always wanted to do something with that.

[click to enlarge]

Here are some questions I might ask, before any calculations are done:

Which is longer in real life, the Honda or the Volkswagen?
Without calculating, estimate the real length of the fire truck.

Then,

Find the real length of all.

	Honda Insight 2010	Volkswagen Bus	Lexus GS430	Fire truck
Scale	1:62	1:59	1:64	1:123
Model length (mm)	69	72	75	74
Calculated length (mm)	4 278	4 248	4 800	9 102
Real-life length	4 390	4 505	4 826

[click to enlarge]

What about this Matchbox plane? It has no scale. I measure the model's length as 106 mm. The model is a Cessna Citation X with a length of 22.05 m.

Therefore, the scale should be 1:208.

Any other good questions? What else should I do?

Matchbox Cars ppt, 2.4 MB

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License (?).

Posted in • Lesson Idea • Scale • Media • Photo | Short URL: http://mths.co/3953

Comments

author

Simon Job on 23 November 14 at 11:42 AM #

One idea would be to create scale diagrams (e.g. simple rectangular representation) of the models using the same scale, e.g. 1:64 ([url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matchbox_(brand)#Scales_of_models"]standard Matchbox scale[/url]). Another, would be to take a chosen real car and scale to 1:64, defining the dimensions of the model.

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Simon Job — eleventh year of teaching maths in a public high school in Western Sydney, Australia.
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Scale Cars

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