Shortly after the second bell rings to signal the start of another day at Atwater-Cosmos-Grove City High School, principal Sherri Broderius bursts into a math classroom with an announcement that would make anyone jump.

“Hurry, you guys need to go to the theater right now. There’s been a murder. Hurry!”

The dumbfounded Algebra II students obediently rise from their chairs and head to the theater, unaware that it’s their math skills that could crack the case.

Crossing the caution tape, the students find a “dead body” lying on the theater stage. Using logarithms, exponentials and Newton’s Law of Cooling the students become investigators into the murder case.

Needless to say, the murder is fake and the victim is a dummy, not a real person. But the activity gives students a taste of how math works in the real world, said ACGC teacher Josh Wallestad.
“It’s an application of the math they’ve been learning,” he said.

This is the second year Wallestad has surprised his students with a crime scene mathematics challenge. Wallestad and student teacher Kimberly Robison set up the fake crime scene and distributed clues throughout the building.

Read the complete story in the March 13 Independent Review.