Question

During a snowstorm, Eva tracked the amount of snow on the ground. When the storm began, there was no snow on the ground. Snow fell at a constant rate of 3 inches per hour until 6 inches had fallen. The storm then stopped for 5 hours and then started again at a constant rate of 2 inches per hour for the next 2 hours. As soon as the storm stopped again, the sun came out and melted the snow for the next 2 hours at a constant rate of 4 inches per hour. Make a graph showing the inches of snow on the ground over time using the data that Eva collected.

Answer 1

This is how the graph would look like.

The number of inches is represented on the y axis while the number of hours is represented on the x axis.

We can see that for the fiest one hour, the height was 3 inches. In 2 hours, it was 6 inches. When the storm stopped for 5 hours, there was no increase in height hence the constant value on the y axis. After 5 hours, the height increased by 4 inches at a rate of 2 inches per hour. This brings the height to 10 inches. After that, it decreased by 8 inches at a rate of 4 inches per hour.