Today I was watching the Daytona 500 car race, and the announcers
mentioned several times that the banking on the curves is pretty
steep - that it slants up so that they can go fast without running off
the track. At one point, one of them said, "At 31 degrees, it's probably
steeper than the roof on your house."
Naturally, that caught my attention - a geometry PoW! How convenient.
So let's figure this out. Is 31 degrees steeper than the roof on my
house? First problem is that I don't know how steep my roof is.
However, I do know how steep the roof is on the house I helped build when
I was in college, so let's use that.
The main house roof had a 10-inch pitch. What that means is that for
every 12 inches of horizontal measurement, the roof goes up 10 inches.
(Remember slope from algebra?) Is the Daytona speedway track steeper
than this roof?
How about the garage roof on the house I built? That roof had an 8-inch
pitch.
Make sure you draw a good picture. You might have to look up how to
figure out the angle of each roof, but I think you can do it!