IM Geo.1.9 Lesson: Speedy Delivery
What do you notice? What do you wonder?
Here is a square city with 3 locations of the same store.
The company wants to break the city down into regions so that whenever someone orders from an address, their order is sent to the store closest to their home. They have hired you to decide how to partition the city between the 3 stores. Explain or show your reasoning.
If there are 100 employees, how should they be distributed among the 3 locations?
Is there anywhere in the city that has the same distance to all 3 stores?
Now a fourth store opens. Partition the city again.
In 1854, there was an outbreak of cholera in London. A physician named John Snow thought the water supply might be responsible. He made a map showing the location of all the water pumps in the city and the locations of all the deaths due to cholera in the city. How could he have used the ideas in this activity to help isolate the cause of the outbreak? The diagrams you made in the activity and that Snow made are called Voronoi diagrams, and are still actively studied by mathematicians.
Create a Voronoi diagram from a map.
Who might be interested in this information?
Write a letter to the person or organization, explaining what the diagram tells them about the map you chose.
Your teacher will assign you a tessellation.
- Imagine that each point is a store from the “Who Is Closest?” activity. Repeat the process you used there to define the regions that are closest to each of the points.
- Use the Polygon Tool and the color selector in the Style Bar to enhance your design.