Artifact
Hot Rod is one of those movies that’s incredibly dumb the first time watching it. The second time watching it, it’s still incredibly dumb, but it gets funnier with each passing viewing. It’s basically just an excuse for Andy Samberg to to Andy Samberg things for 90 minutes. I’m ok with that.
Anyway, this isn’t Rotten Tomatoes. Let’s get to our Entry Event:
The final stunt of the movie, cut ever-so-slightly short.
Suggested questions
- The most obvious one: will Hot Rod land the jump? Or maybe better if you know how it ends: will he clear the jump?
- You could get all physical on this question. Considering how high he is and how fast he’s going at liftoff might be some other options.
Activities
In a nod to Dan’s “Will it hit the hoop” task, I’d go with Geogebra here as well. In fact, let’s just use pretty much the same idea (side note: if anyone can rip a better quality video, I’d be interested).
In fact, I’m going to go ahead and toss it in after the Basketball task in my Algebra 1 curriculum map. I’d consider using the Hot Rod task as a way of solidifying conceptual understanding by removing some of the sliders on the Geogebra task, or removing it from Geogebra entirely and having groups do some hand-to-hand combat with it on paper. It’s times like this that a problem taxonomy could help: do you want to assess student learning or enhance prior learning?
The goods
The video (above)
A couple screen shots
Fig 1:
Figs 1 & 2 mashed together
The Geogebratube student worksheet
Aaaand the “reveal”:
On final monkey wrench:
Conservation of momentum?
emergent math 
Act three’s kind of a wash, but that’s a fun find right there.
Yeah I hear you. Act 3 is a bit superfluous. Wish it could have been a bit more cut and dry as to the result of the jump. But alas, maybe when Hot Rod makes the Criterion Collection they’ll have a directors cut or something. Thanks for the comment!