Get Ready for the Lego Olympics

Get ready mathspigs. You need one Lego Man, Girl, Vampire or Alien each for this exercise. Now we are going to set out the Lego Olympics Athletics track.

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But this story of the Olympics begins with Carl Lewis, one of the greatest athletes of all time who won 9 Olympic Gold medals in 100m, 200m, relay and long jump.

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Carl Lewis

Mathspig needs to find out how big the Lego Olympics track would be. How? Easy.

Carl Lewis will be our standard Lego Man.

I chose Carl Lewis because he kindly gave me his autograph once when I sprinted in high heels across a ballroom floor at a sports dinner in Melbourne and beat all other journalists.  It was my personal best in high heels, I think.

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This means everything at the Lego Olympics  will be

1:50

of the real Olympics.

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The  Lego Bird’s Nest Stadium @ Beijing will be 1/50th of the real Bird’s Nest Stadium. (Not the scale shown here). Pictures by Johor Bahru.

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The Lego Beijing Water Cube Swim Centre will be 1/50th of the Real Water Cube.

EXERCISE 1:

Now mathspiggies over to you. The first thing to do is calculate the Lego Olympic measurements (table below). 

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EXERCISE 2:

Then mark out a Lego Olympics 100m sprint to scale and/or

draw a Lego Olympic track (in chalk, perhaps) and/or

step out a Lego Olympic marathon track and/or

make a pole vault pole to scale for your little Lego Man.

Or bring in a Lego Man/Girl/Pirate and step out the Marathon Track (840m to scale).

This little guy has to run 840 m!!!!! Wow!

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Structure	Real Olympics	Lego Olympics
100m Sprint	100m	2m
400m Sprint	400m
42 km marathon	42,000m
Olympic Pool Length	50m
Olympic Pool Width	25m
Olympic Rowing Course	2,000m
Equestrian Jump Height	2m
Approx Pole Vault Pole Length	5.5m
Javelin Length Men Women	2.6m 2.2m
Olympic Stadium Straight Segment Semi-circle Radius inner Lane Lane Width	84.39m 36.50m 2.5m

Lego Olympics Flags

The Lego Marching band is rehearsing for the Opening ceremony.

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………….Bandito (Republic of Baddies)

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Mr Boopy (Bozonia)

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Gorilla Suit Guy (Halloweenotopia)

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………………..Barry the Butcher (Alien Steakistan)

……………..BioHaz (Toxorama)

…………………Dead-Eye Doc (AyeAwArghia)

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Dr Jabb (Bummerville)

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Hula Lula (Grinmania) 

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1. Flag Fractions

EQUIPMENT: Mixed Lego Blocks

Here is the maths. It’s fractions. It’s simple.

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A. National Flag of  Comotosia

They’re a bit sleepy in Comotosia so you better design a flag to wake them up, mathspigs.

The flag must measure ………….   6 blocks x  12 blocks.

One block is a 4 bumps blocks (See pic). An 8 bumps block equals 2 blocks.

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Here’s the catch, mathpiggies.  1/4 of the blocks in the flag must be RED.

How will you do this? (Hint below)

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

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.B. National Flag of Bordom

Once again the Bordonians need a lively flag.

The flag must measure 6 blocks by 12 blocks, but this time it must contain 1/4 red and 1/3 blue. How do you do this?

Hint: Mathspigs! You will have to count the number of red and blue blocks.

 

2. Design A National Flag to Lego Scale

First, name your Lego man, girl or alien and pick a name for their country, planet or crypt.

You will be drawing two flags.

All national flags are rectangles except Switzerland and Tibet, which have square flags but not at the Olympic Games.

Olympic Flags measure:  150 cm x 90 cm

or …………………………….. 60 inches x 35 inches.

These sizes are not equal so which flag is bigger the decimal flag or the Imperial Units flag?

The Imperial units flag is 152.9 cm x 88.9 cm. It turns out the area of the Decimal flag is 13,500 cm² and the Imperial Flag 13,593 cm² . 

You will be designing a decimal flag.

Note the Flag ratio of length: width = 150 : 90

…………………………………………………… =  15 : 9 = 5: 3

First design a flag with 5: 3 ratio.  One measuring 10cm x 6 cm would be ideal.

 

BUT

How big are the national flags at the Lego Olympics:

Real flags at the Olympics =  150 x 90 cm

Lego Flag measurements =  150/50 x 90/50 = 3 cm x 1.8 cm = 30mm x 18 mm

Here are my two Lego people with flags  I prepared earlier:

The Enforcer from the Constellation of Obeymia and Mr Boopy from Bozonia.

Lego Olympics Triathlon

This is the Lego Triathlon.

And, mathspiggies, your Lego Man/girl/alien has made it into the finals. 

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EQUIPMENT: Your Lego Man, girl, alien, your brain, a calculator & one dice.

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In the Olympic Triathlon contestants:

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Swim 1.5 km = 1,500 m

Cycle 40 km = 40,000 m

Run 10 km = 10, 000 m

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In a Lego Olympic Triathlon little Lego men, girls, aliens have to:

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Swim 1,500/50 = 30m

Cycle 40,000/50 = 800m

Run  10,000/50 = 200m

But each contestant will be better at some section than another.

Your Lego man, girl, alien replaces one of the following contestants. Transfer their number and times to your column.

Now calculate the Total Times for each contestant.

THEN roll the dice.

3. Disqualified because your coach gave you an alien Smoosnot drink with banned drugs by mistake.

5. Disqualified because a Groppanator from the Urgastor Galaxy ran out of the crowd just before the finish line and hugged you with his 6 arms.

Triathlete	30 m Swim Speed + Time	800m Cycle Speed + Time	200m run Speed + Time	Total Time mins	Roll 3 or 5 Disqualified
1 Mummy’s Boy from Crytomania	40 m/hr ……………	400 m/hr ……………	250m/hr ……………	………….	…………..
2 PJ Boy from Pajamarama	30 m/hr ……………	200 m/hr ……………	500 m/hr ……………	………….	…………..
3 Olag from Beserk	40 m/hr ……………	200 m/hr ……………	500 m/hr ……………	………….	…………..
4 Dead-Eye Doc from AyeAwArghia	60 m/hr ……………	400 m/hr ……………	450 m/hr ……………	…………..	…………..
5 Hula Lula from Grinmania	50 m/hr ……………	400 m/hr ……………	500 m/hr ……………	………….	…………..
6 Mr Boopy from Bozonia	30 m/hr ……………	600 m/hr ……………	200 m/hr ……………	…………..	…………..
7 Gorilla Suit Guy from Halloweenotopia	50 m/hr ……………	500 m/hr ……………	300 m/hr ……………	…………..	…………….
8 BioHaz from Toxorama	60 m/hr ……………	500 m/hr ……………	400 m/hr ……………	…………..	…………..
………………… from ………………..	…………… + ………………..	…………….. + ……………..	…………….. + ……………..	…………..	…………..

Who won?

You can work it out mathspigs.

Total Times are published @ the end of The Lego Olympics Closing Ceremony.

Lego Olympics Closing Ceremony

The closing ceremony is chaos. All the athletes crowd together.

There is one last lot of calculations, mathspigs.

Think about this.

% Gold Medal Winners:

At the 2012 London Olympics there were 47 Gold medals awarded in athletics.

There will be 2,000 athletes competing for these medals. Now some athletes will win more than one Gold medal and some events eg. the relay race involve more than one athlete. Each member of the winning relay team wins a Gold Medal.

Approximately what % of athletes won’t win a Gold Medal at the London Olympics?

Ans:  97.65%

Probability of Winning a Gold Medal:

Ha-HA! Tricked ya! Such a calculation would be meaningless.

The core to all probability is, or should be, RANDOM SELECTION.

Lottery balls fall randomly into the tube. But the Olympic athletes represent a BIASED SAMPLE. Athletes are selected for the games. They must qualify for an event. They train. The chance of one athlete winning is quite different from that of another.

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Eight numbered  100m-sprint athletes is a Biased Sample.

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Eight numbered lottery balls in last nights draw make up a random sample.

This brings us to the end of the Lego Olympics.

We will finish with  some Lego fireworks.

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Lego Olympics Triathlon total Times: 1. Mummy’s Boy: 3 hrs 33 mins, 2. PJ Boy 5 hrs 24 mins, 3. Olag 2 hrs 51 mins, 4. Dead-Eye Doc 2hrs 57 mins, 5. Hula Lula 3 hrs, 6. Mr Boopy 3 hrs 20 min, 7. Gorilla Suit Guy 2hrs 52 mins,8. BioHaz  2 hrs 36 mins.