A World of 7 Billion

Today we integrated current events into math and learned about how the world population just hit 7 billion.  That is a HUGE number!  Did you know it would take 200 years to count to 7 billion out loud?  And 7 billion steps would take you around the world 133 times?  In shocking contrast, 7 billion people could fit shoulder to shoulder in Los Angeles.   Mind boggling!!



We read A Million Dots (Andrew Clements) to try to frame the scale.  Even talking about place value and realized that 1 billion is 1,000 millions, it is still incomprehensibly enormous.  We also watched a powerful short clip from National Geographic about the world at 7 billion that elicited a lot of "Whoas!" from the kids ("I also really like the music," added Stefan).  Brain Pop has a great piece on Population Growth focused more on resources.

Using data from the "World of 7 Billion", we graphed the population growth in billions.  After plotting the graph, Spencer inquired, "Why is it so flat from 1800 and 1 billion to 1930 and 2 billion?" which lead to a great discussion about factors (such as technological, medical, sanitation advances) influencing population growth, getting deeper into the subject.  Alexander also astutely noticed, "When the population is growing faster,  the slope of the graph is steeper."  Wow!

Here are resources to share and reflect at home-

World at 7 Billion Chart

National Geographic 7 billion video

Brain Pop Population Growth