Unschool Bushfire Maths

I open my phone to google ‘smoky or smokey’ to find out the correct spelling of this word. (I’ve been using it a lot lately.) And I find a warning waiting for me to read. (It arrived in the night while I was asleep.)

A fire has escalated in your watch zone.

I head straight over to the Fires Near Me app to see what’s going on. I discover that there’s no need to panic. The bushfire is no longer threatening us. We’re safe. At least for the moment.

But what if a bushfire was headed our way? How long would it take to reach us? How fast do fires travel?

I do some googling and find out that bushfires can travel as fast as 10.8 km/hr. (Grass fires move even quicker.) I also google the distance to the next village where the fire is burning. I manipulate the numbers and soon I know we would have about 46 minutes to pack up and leave before the fire got here.

But that’s if the fire comes via the road which it won’t. So would the fire reach us sooner coming directly as the crow flies? And what about embers? How far ahead of a fire do they travel?

Then there’s the terrain to take into consideration. Fires travel faster uphill. We live uphill. A fire will spread up a 20-degree slope four times as fast as it will along flat ground.

Oh my, there’s a lot of real-life maths wrapped up in a bushfire!

Here’s some more:

Right at this moment, there are 110 bushfires burning across our state of NSW. 59 of the fires are uncontained. 2,200 firefighters are in the field battling the flames.

Our local fire covers an area of over 140,000 hectares. One hectare is approximately 2.5 acres. So the fire has consumed about 350,000 acres. Did you know that one acre is equivalent to 696,960 sticky notes? So (350,000 x 696, 960) sticky notes would be needed to represent the fire!

The bushfire is expected to grow much bigger before it’s contained. How long will it take to get the fire under control? A month? Longer? The RFS can make a prediction, but nobody really knows.

Now I’m thinking about the heat of a fire. What temperatures are the firefighters enduring? I might have to do some more googling to find out.

Sometimes people ask me if unschooling is just about living life. It certainly is if life is full and interesting. It’s amazing what we can learn from what’s happening around us. Of course, we’d prefer not to have a bushfire burning close to us, but it is providing lots of opportunities for discussions and further research. And some of the info we find out just might keep us safe.

In case you’re wondering, most websites say that ‘smoky’ is the correct spelling if we’re using this word as an adjective. Smokey is used if the word is a noun. That’s some real-life English.

And if you want to learn some real-life science as well as some more real-life maths, google ‘health and bushfire smoke’ or ‘exercise and bushfire smoke.’ I did that yesterday when my chest began to hurt and breathing became difficult. I discovered that we inhale 10 times as much air when we’re running compared to walking. That means I’ve inhaled a huge amount of smoke recently.

Now I’m wondering: would it be prudent to take a break from running until the air clears?

There’s something else I’m wondering about: should I stop using the ‘do not disturb‘ feature on my phone while I’m asleep so that I receive the bushfire warnings as soon as they’re issued?

Of course, the answer to my last two questions is yes!

Something Extra

Have you received many Christmas cards in the mail? We haven’t. It’s only a week until Christmas and we only have three cards. It’s our own fault. For the last few years, I haven’t sent cards to other people. We’ve probably been crossed off everyone’s Christmas card lists. So we have three cards. But we could have 210. We know how to multiply our cards using a bit of unschool maths. If you’d like to know more, you could read my story, Unschool Christmas Card Maths!

Photos

Did you hear how the other day we raced outside to clear away the vegetation from our house when we heard a bushfire was racing towards a neighbouring village?

So, I’m wondering if you’ve done any real-life maths recently. Do you like sticky notes? And have you received many Christmas cards? Or maybe you’ve been crossed off everyone’s Christmas card lists like us! 

(I really should communicate better with our friends and family. Wouldn’t it be sad if we drifted apart just because I failed to make some effort and write some cards?)