Response to "Giant Soup Can Puzzle"

Sources used to fill in missing information gaps:

• Campbell's Soup Can dimensions:
• https://www.walmart.com/ip/Campbell-s-Condensed-Tomato-Soup-10-75-oz-Can/10321636?classType=VARIANT&athbdg=L1600
• Fire needed to put out an average house fire
• https://medium.com/@kiserdigitalmarketing/how-much-water-is-used-to-put-out-a-fire-fa075607bfb6
• Google Maps Street View location of the water tank
• https://maps.app.goo.gl/FMbeH7TSFNy9AeTi7
• Upper bounds on housing square footage
• https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/mapping-the-million-how-much-home-can-1m-buy-in-major-real-estate-markets-across-canada-869168725.html#:~:text=The%20average%20home%20in%20Canada%20valued%20between%20%241%2C950%2C000%20and%20%242%2C050%2C000,inclusive%20of%20all%20property%20types.
• Google Lens was used as a starting point to decide the dimensions of an average woman's bicycle tire dimensions.

The scratch work:

Here, I was trying to figure out the wire mesh of the can in case there were any considerations to make regarding the true volume. A can may be cylindrical, but the dents could've warped the volume of the tank. I used Street View to make sure that the dents were not too big, and there were no backside perspectives of the can, so I chose to assume that everything was plain cylindrical there.

Here, I attempted to identify any camera curvatures that would affect my calculations. There was a slight perspective curvature as you went towards the right side (it would get further away), so I was mindful of that when using the tire's diameter to measure.

Here comes the big consolidation. I realized that the perspective's effect wasn't too consequential for the vertical measuring with bike tires. In any case, this is when I used Google Lens to get an idea of how wide the bike tires would be, and 26" seemed to be the general consensus average among women's bikes. I also realized that since the proportions are the same, it's a lot easier to just take the vertical dimension in the image instead of the horizontal one because it was warped less by camera perspective. Coupled with the proportions of a Campbell's Soup Can, I found that the diameter was about 94.9" and the horizontal measure was about 143.2".

(The red comes second. Chronologically, I wrote the yellow first.)

This is when I answered the rest of the questions: 1) The volume was 16100.4L or 4253.3 gallons, which was the more usable unit unfortunately because the website where I found the water demand formula was in American units. How thematic, considering that the fate of the world (America) is being decided tomorrow. In any case, the final answer shows that there is so much more water than is needed according to the numbers that even if it's a particularly bad fire, or if the tank's dents affected the volume more than by 3%, the tank would have more than enough water to put out an average house fire.

For my student bird perspective on getting stuck, I would say the comments I wrote in the images should suffice. Many of my stuck moments stemmed from me aiming for perfection in my measurements, which resulted in painstaking experiments and analyses with image processing tools and other meticulous overboard measures. Some stuckness can also be attributed to how it took surprisingly long to find sources for the missing numbers; I did not expect it to take that long to find non-volume based measurements of a Campbell's can despite thinking that it should be pretty common practice to include.

For my teacher bird perspective, I found that I was getting caught up on too many perfectionist-level details and that I should've just relaxed and fallen back on easier estimates. I feel like there was a brute force approach at first by going for every single possible analytical strategy, when in fact there was a much easier way that would've saved me a lot of time (such as ignoring the camera perspective warps and using more reliable measures from the get-go). I also found that I learned from this a little too late at the end, when I decided to just approximate the effects of the denting on the volume to save time which might've ended up being the better choice than being hyper-meticulous with the dimensions of the water tank warpages. The research was still done in good spots as I had little knowledge of the exact proportions of the can or the amount of water needed to put out a house fire, as well as the average house's square footage, so there are no qualms there. Estimating based on what I've seen from multiple sources was also a good choice in the effort-reward tradeoff. Would it really be worth making a whole mesh frame and analyzing volumes to the smallest pixel? Probably not. Let's just fall back on the average down-to-earth human strategy of estimation instead.

In terms of extending the puzzle, the idea is relatively simple: instead of asking if the water tank can hold enough water to put out an average house fire, why not put the scope of the question into the personal side of things? Inspired by a Numeracy Assessment question that my EDCP 441 professor showed us, I would ask either:

1. Does the tank supports their current household water usage for a given timeframe? If not, what is the plan to reduce their water usage such that they can use the tank for the timeframe, or how many tanks would be needed?
2. How long would the tank support their current household water usage? 
3. How many tanks would be needed to support the water usage of all of BC?

The idea behind these questions is to inspire the students to think about their own water consumption, which adds an extra element of searching within one's self. While they still have to search things such as how much water an appliance would use, they would need to assess the amount of water that they personally use which cannot be searched up anywhere on the Internet. Alternatively, they can answer based on a classmate's water consumption, which would open up dialogue and extend the skill development to include listening and assessing, all while putting the students in the shoes of an assessment officer giving advice to a family on their water usage. The question can also be narrowed down to a specific form of water use (how long could you run the shower for) as well.

(For another extension idea, we can ask students how many specific shapes would fit inside the space of the container. The dents would add an extra layer of complexity, and students cannot simply fall back on the total volume calculation or simple distance measures. Perhaps one of these shapes could be Campbell's soup cans and we could have a can-ception.)