Male Narrator: Funding for this program is provided in part by... Male Narrator: We believe in getting outside, playing in the yard, growing things, and connecting with the earth.

We believe good can grow anywhere.

That is why we are committed to GroMoreGood, everywhere.

Male Narrator: And also by... Hi, friends.

I am Caroline.

And this is How It's Math, where we discover the surprising ways math shows up in the real world and in amazing careers.

Have you ever wondered how firefighters know how quickly to respond, how scientists create new materials, or how farms and labs make sure everything is accurate and safe?

Today, we have a very special episode all about how math helps people make important decisions every single day.

First, we are heading to a fire department, where firefighters use elapsed time and quick calculations to respond to emergencies.

Next, we will step into the world of chemical engineering and gardening, where math is used to mix test and create new solutions when it comes to gardening.

After that, we will visit a dairy farm to see how multiplication helps farmers manage production and care for their animals.

Finally, we will go inside a blood lab, where professionals use decimals and rounding to make precise measurements that help doctors care for patients.

From emergency response to science to farming, you are about to see that math is not just something you do in school, it is something people rely on to make real world decisions.

Let's get started.

♪ Doodly doodle, doodly doodle ♪ Doodly doodles and digits ♪ ♪ Area, symmetry, fractions too ♪ ♪ It's all here for you ♪ When there is an emergency, firefighters have to act fast and make smart decisions.

Did you know that math helps them do this, from figuring out how long it will take to get to a fire to planning how long they can safely stay inside a building?

Firefighters use elapsed time to make sure every second counts.

In this segment, we are suiting up to see how math helps firefighters save the day.

Let's check it out.

Let's talk to some real firefighters to see how they use math.

My name is John Shearer.

I am a firefighter paramedic with the Westville Division of Fire.

I am Kevin Conroy.

I am a Westerville firefighter paramedic.

My name is Brian Miller, and I am the fire chief for the Westerville Division of Fire.

What does a typical day look like?

My morning starts with my alarm going off at about 4:45 and I have to be freshly shaved.

We are not allowed to have any beards.

Now I can have the mustache, but I have to be freshly shaved and clean, and I show up to work ready for my shift change.

I have to drive just over an hour to get here, but I have to be ready for my shift change at 7:30.

Kevin Conroy: We do roll call, so both shifts stand in the hallway, right outside of our bunk room.

We talk, we go over anything that might have happened in the last few days that I was off work that we need to know about.

And then we start out with our truck checks.

We make sure that the trucks are fully operational and running correctly, with all the gear that we need to take the emergencies.

Kevin Conroy: After that, we close up the truck and we wash them so they are nice and clean.

So we are proud of our station.

We are proud of the things that people pay for it and allow us to use in order to help them.

Whenever the run comes in, we stop what we are doing to take the emergency run.

With our job, every second counts.

Fire every 30 seconds doubles in size.

So, it is real important that when we get the call, we get dressed and out the door as quickly as we can.

When somebody dials 911, it goes to our communication center.

A dispatcher answers the call, finds out what the emergency is, and that takes about a minute, and then they have another minute to dispatch the Fire Department to the call.

When we receive the call here at the Firehouse, once we get all of our gear on and we mark responding, we try to get to the scene of the emergency within four to six minutes.

So overall, typically, if you call 911, from the time the 911 center receives the call to the time we mark on scene, is what we try to shoot for six to eight minutes.

How do you use math?

Where I find I am using math the most is when we are determining square footage of a residence and how much fire involvement there could be, then we want to estimate the length of the building and the width of the building, and then when we multiply those two items, it gives us an area.

The fire flow formula that I utilize is the length times the width and then I divide that area by three, and that should effectively give me about how many gallons of water I need, if that amount of area is all burning.

Do you ever use angles?

For us, typically, a lot of those angles are in reference to our ladder truck.

So, when we are measuring those angles, we kind of have to think about, okay, well, yes, this is a 107-foot truck, but I need to get to the third or fourth storey of a building and we are parked a certain distance away, am I going to be able to reach?

What tools do you use when using that?

We have all kinds of gauges and instruments that tell us how much air we have left.

As the fire chief, I am looking on the side of my trucks, and there is a gauges that tells me how much water is left in the tank on the fire truck, and I can monitor that to make sure that we are hooking into a fire hydrant and we have enough water to put the fire out.

The tape measure of all things.

Just recently, we had a shoring operation, where a vehicle drove into the front of a house, in that scenario, estimating the distances, wouldn't have been as good.

So, it is important to be as precise as possible so that we can build the best shore possible.

One of the things that is super important to me on the medic truck is a calculator.

Being able to calculate how much of a medication I need to give somebody, being able to estimate a person's weight.

So, if you guys have ever seen the carnival games where they guess your weight, firemen are the best at that.

I know that my stride is about three feet long when I am walking with my gear on.

So, I can use that to approximate how much hose I am going to need.

I can use that to approximate just how long the building is, how far in we are.

I know that if I am on my knees crawling, I move about six inches with every walk.

So, I can estimate just how far into a building I have moved.

Is it important to show your thinking?

When we are practicing paramedicine or if we are out on a fire scene, we all have whiteboards with us.

It's super helpful for us on the medic truck, because we can actually calculate our dosages out in front of us and somebody else can come in and check me so that they know that my math is correct and we are on the same page.

We can also do very similar things on the fire truck, especially with planning fire attack and things like that.

If we don't have our work written out, sometimes it's difficult to communicate that verbally as to, what the chief might want us to do or what our plan of attack might be without seeing it.

Our SCBAs are breathing bottles that we use when we are in a fire.

Those only have so much air in them.

They carry 4500 PSI of air, which sounds like quite a lot.

It's supposed to last us 45 minutes, breathing normally.

But for us, when we are working hard, we are in there either helping people, putting fire out, taking down ceilings, looking for more fire that exhausts us, and our air runs out a lot quicker.

So, consequently, we have to be very aware of our time management on our air bottles, so that we do not run out.

Caroline: A firefighter goes into a burning building at 03:28 pm, his oxygen pack will only last him 20 minutes.

What time does the firefighter need to leave the building?

[clock ticking] 03:48 pm.

Did you get it correct?

Did you enjoy math growing up?

No, I did not.

I did not enjoy math.

I was good at it, but I did not enjoy math.

It seemed very redundant, and it took a lot of practice.

It took a lot of time to be good at it, and that is like most anything.

You got to practice if you want to be good at something.

I enjoyed math.

However, I was very bad at it.

I went to college.

I had to take calculus three times just to pass it, but I have always enjoyed the applications that I have for math in the real world, whether I am building something, whether I am at work.

Do you have any advice for us?

Don't get discouraged.

Well, when I was going through math classes, I just wanted to know when it would end.

How much more math could there possibly be, but in the end, it does not end.

Math continues to go on.

It's important to always kind of reference back to the material you learned early on, because it will only help you and reinforce those skills when you are practicing math later in life, When you are in school, you really need to take the time to learn math, because you are going to need it for the rest of your life.

And it will reward you as you move forward, as you grow up, as you become an adult.

And whatever career you pick, I guarantee there is math involved in it.

Best advice I could give an elementary student is, enjoy being in school.

Have fun learning.

A lot of this stuff doesn't seem like it might pertain to you yet, but once you grow up and you find what you want to do, you might realize that a lot more of what you learned in school is applicable and hopefully you paid attention.

My name is Brian Miller, and I am a fire chief.

My name is John.

I am a firefighter paramedic.

I am Kevin Conroy.

I am a firefighter paramedic for the City of Westerville.

and this is How It's Math.

That is me, I am going to head out.

Did you know there is a ton of math involved when it comes to gardening?

While you might be able to think of area and perimeter when you plan your garden, there is a ton more math that goes into the products that you use.

Today, we get to go behind the scenes and actually see how the products you use to make your garden thrive are created.

Let's get into it.

My name is Abby Prickett.

I am a Process and Formulations engineer.

We work with a whole bunch of engineers, chemists, biologists to develop home, lawn and garden products.

How do you use math?

We use math all the time.

When you buy a fertilizer product or a potting soil, for example, a lot of work went into that bag or bottle before you even got it.

So, we do not just mix a whole bunch of materials together and hope it turns out right.

My name is Ezekial Carl.

I am a chemical analyst.

I am the guy that takes the bag and makes sure that everything that's supposed to be in the bag is in the bag.

Typically, in a bag of fertilizer, you would have a nitrogen component, potassium component, number of products to be carriers for a pesticide that we would spray on it, something that would help to kill weeds you didn't want in your lawn or bugs.

What measurement units do you use?

Grams, pounds for our measurements.

A big one that we use all the time is a gallon of water, a common watering can size, so we often put like one gallon of product.

Once you mix it covers 10 square feet.

For example, if your garden is 30 square feet, you need to know how much of that product you are going to use at a single time and then throughout the season, to be able to understand how much that you need to buy.

Do you use fractions?

So, we use fractions all the time, whether you are talking about a quarter of a tablespoon or a quarter of a teaspoon.

Being able to convert between fractions and decimals is also really key.

With our standards, we are looking at something, say, like a 97% concentration.

Well, 97% of that sample would be pure and we can use that to tell how much pure substance is in our fertilizers or our pesticides.

To the very precise standards, ensuring that you have correct decimal points is important to make sure that you get the final correct result.

What type of tools do you use?

We use everything from simple components, like beakers and flasks, graduated cylinders that have graduation marks in milliliters to pipettes, which we use to transfer small amounts of liquids, down to the microliters.

Abby Prickett: To measure actual things, we use balances and scales all the time.

To do weights... What does a typical day look like in your career?

My day starts with getting into the office.

I will usually try to get out to our lab space.

I will weigh up each raw material, mix them together for whatever product I am making, and then label and bottle it up.

I will already know basically what samples I will be testing.

I will take those samples, break them down into a smaller sample that I can get a better look at.

We will then take that sample and we'll extract the component that we are looking for.

Why is it important to show your thinking?

I write everything out.

Not only is it important that the work that we do is repeatable.

If I just mix a whole bunch of stuff together in the lab, not only am I not going be able to recreate that ever again, but nobody else can either.

Almost all of the work I do here gets reviewed.

If we see that we have issues with an analysis, I can go back and double-check my math and have someone else double-check my math.

Did you enjoy math growing up?

I loved math growing up.

Just the fact that you can do calculations for really anything throughout your day, because you can use it for so many different things.

Once I saw how math could be used to analyze the world around us, then that was much more intriguing than numbers on a page.

It's not something that you can avoid.

You embrace it, and as an adult, I have really embraced math.

To feed your plants with fertilizer, you need to mix the fertilizer with one gallon of water for every 10 square feet of flowers and vegetables.

Your garden is 200 square feet.

How many gallons of water will you need?

[clock ticking] The answer is 20 gallons.

I did 200 divided by 10 equals 20.

20 gallons is your answer.

One thing that I like about working here is there is a lot of one team mentality, lots of ways to continue kind of carrying a torch for a product, even after my piece of it is done.

I really enjoyed being in a lab.

The more time I spent in the lab, the more I realized I would like to work in the lab for the rest of my life.

I got to use all of the science that I just learned in school.

I have really enjoyed all the different types of science that we do.

With all of those people working together to do science is a lot of fun.

My name is Ezekial Carl.

My name is Abby Prickett.

-And this is How It's Math.

-How It Math.

Welcome to Young's Jersey Dairy, where the cows are friendly, the ice cream is delicious, and math is part of the recipe.

Today, we are heading behind the scenes to see how this Ohio farm uses math every single day to make things like cheese, ice cream, and more.

From measuring ingredients to caring for the cows, math helps keep everything running smoothly.

Let's go check it out.

I am Dan Young from Young's Jersey Dairy.

I am the chief ice cream dipper or CEO.

Cheese we make pretty much every day here on the farm.

We start off with the milk, we add some culture, and we add some rennet, and then we heat it up and let it coagulate and stick together, and then we drain off the whey, W-H-E-Y, and what we are left with is the curds.

Little Miss Muffet, sat on her tuffet, eating her curds and whey.

The curd is the cheese part.

If we are making Cheddar cheese, we take the curds, cook them a little bit, warm them back up, and then we put them through a thing called cheddaring.

It's like a play dough machine.

It's like little, tiny pieces of curds, like cottage cheese within, then we squeeze it together and it comes out of the long curd-looking thing.

And then we take that, we either eat it fresh or we put it in a mould, M-O-U-L-D, and age it at about 50 degrees for three months to five years before we eat it.

We make ice cream here on the farm by taking milk and cream and sugar, mixing them together, pasteurizing it, homogenizing it, and then we put it into a batch freezer that does either five or ten gallons at a time, and then, depending on the flavour, we are adding in vanilla or chocolate or strawberries, and then about 15 minutes later, the ice cream comes out.

We put it in a container, three gallons, half gallons, pints, and then we put it in a really, really cold deep freezer, about 25 degrees below zero, and it freezes it quickly so it maintains a good creamy flavor and texture.

All right.

So how does Young's Jersey dairy use math?

We use math in pretty much everything that we do.

For making ice cream and especially making cheese.

Everyday, every batch has a sheet so we know how many pounds of milk we started with, what quantity of rennet we put in, what culture we put in, and how much and many more things, including what the eventual yield of the batch was.

And we keep very good track of that, because we know, on average we are going to get about 13 to 13.5 pounds of cheese per 100 pounds of Jersey milk, and if all of a sudden we are not, we got to find out why.

Did we mix it in wrong?

Did we get the wrong temperature?

Are the cows in a bad mood?

Cow humor.

Each of our Jersey cows here, we milk twice a day, once early in the morning and once in the afternoon.

Each cow, believe it or not, gets fed different amounts of grain on hay, kind of depending upon how much milk that they are giving, because that takes a lot of energy from the cow to produce the milk, for a smaller farm, milking maybe 40 cows.

So, we know each of them by name.

So, if Nelly, the cow, normally gives four gallons of milk a day, and in one day she comes in and only gives two, the math tells us something is wrong, and so, then we got to check on her health to make sure what is going on, whether it is something we need to take care of.

So, that is important to us.

What tools do you use when using math?

What we use to measure things here is actually milk that is in a bulk tank, which is where all the milk goes to when it comes from the cow.

We have a big measuring stick and it has got a number on there and you got to look on a chart and it tells you how many pounds of milk there are in that tank.

And that is how we know we just put a 1000 pounds of milk, for example, in the cheese bag.

And then after that, we have measuring cups, we also have scales.

What is something that might surprise students about your career?

Cows, depending on the weather, can give more or less milk.

A perfect temperature for Jersey cows is about 50 degrees Fahrenheit, they are really happy.

70s or 80s are so fine, 90s they get a little grumpy, and if it is really cold, we put them outside for a little exercise.

About five minutes later, they are standing at the door going, let me back in, it's too cold out here.

The dairy farm produces a lot of milk in the summer.

They produce 7800 pounds of milk in one week.

How much milk can they produce in three weeks.

[clock ticking] [bell ringing] They produce 23,400 pounds of milk.

I found this out by multiplying 7800 by 3.

Did you get it correct?

I am Dan Young.

We are at a dairy farm and this is How It's Math.

Have you ever wondered what happens when you get a blood test at the doctor's office?

Your sample goes to a medical lab, a place filled with technology, machines, and even robots, that help figure out what is going on inside your body.

In this segment, we are visiting a high-tech lab, where laboratory professionals work together to run tests, measure results, and make sure people stay healthy.

Guess what?

Math plays a big role in all of it.

Let's go behind the scenes to see how math helps medical labs do their life saving work.

My name is Jennifer Robinson and I am a laboratory supervisor at Central Ohio Primary Care.

A laboratory technician or medical laboratory technician or medical scientist is actually the person who investigates all of the blood work and specimens that we receive from your doctor's office when you get your blood drawn.

Caroline: What happens to your blood after it gets drawn at the doctor's?

Once your blood arrives at the lab, it gets put in this automated blood testing line to be processed.

Based on the barcode on your blood vial, it will tell the machines what tests it needs to run.

The vial travels down the line, completes the test order.

The line completes many important tasks, including taking off the caps, re-sealing them after the tests, and gently mixing the vials up before being stored.

After all the tests have been completed, your blood will go into storage for five days, in case your doctor orders more tests.

After five days, it is disposed off properly by going into an incinerator.

What does a typical day look like?

A typical day, we are actually 24/7.

So, when you are fast asleep, we are running all of your blood samples.

In the mornings, all of the doctors' offices around Ohio are getting all of their samples from their patients, and we get it usually about in the afternoon, up to 10,000 samples coming through here.

We process them in the afternoon, and by the evening, the doctor has the report on the computer.

How do you use math?

There's about 80 organs inside your body and each organ has a different value of your hormone, your proteins, enzymes, that we get to test and then we take those values and give those to the doctor so they can tell you whether you are healthy or not.

Decimals are a big thing, because if we give a doctor a 1.1 result for something and it was really supposed to be 0.1, that makes a world of a difference when it comes to an analyzer giving the incorrect result.

We also have to do a conversion as well.

Sometimes the doctor wants picomoles per deciliter instead of millimoles per deciliter, so we actually have to calculate the conversion to give them the correct result.

So, we use math everyday.

Caroline: The lab uses many math skills to make sure that the results are accurate.

Why is it important to be precise in your position?

If our results are not precise giving to the doctor, they can get your medication dosage wrong, they can give you something that you don't really have.

Why is it important to show your thinking?

Believe it or not, we have to keep every single documented, written procedure, written calculation, everything for two years in the laboratory.

It is regulated by our state law.

We have about 60 techs working through here, and if you step out or if you have your day off, that person needs to know exactly where you were in your work, right when they work behind you.

The lab has to round FT3, a hormone, to the nearest tenth when reporting it to doctors.

They test that it has 2.56 picograms per milliliter.

What is this decimal rounded to the nearest tenth?

[clock ticking] 2.6 picograms per milliliters.

Did you get it correct?

Did you enjoy math growing up?

I absolutely loved math growing up.

Do you have any advice for us?

Do one problem at a time and focus on that.

Don't think about five steps ahead.

Focus on what you are doing now and it will come to you.

Don't think of it as being hard.

It is not because it's a actual fact, it's a number, it is constant.

There is always going to be an answer at the end.

What is something that might surprise students about your career?

That there is more than just the doctor and the nurse when you get your blood drawn.

There is somebody actually caring for your sample.

Wow, who knew so much math went into one blood sample?

The next time you are at the doctor, you will know a ton of math goes into keeping you healthy.

And my name is Jennifer Robinson.

I am a medical laboratory technician and this is How It's Math.

Wow, look at all the ways math helps people make important decisions and keep others safe.

Today, we saw professionals using math to respond to emergencies, create new solutions, manage farms, and analyze important data in labs.

Whether it was measuring time, multiplying quantities or working with decimals, math helped guide every step of the process.

The next time you solve a problem in class, remember you are building the same skills that firefighters, engineers, farmers, and scientists use every single day.

Thanks for exploring with us on How It's Math.

I am Caroline, and I can't wait to discover more real-world math with you next time.

Male Narrator: Funding for this program is provided in part by... Female Narrator: We believe in getting outside, playing in the yard, growing things, and connecting with the earth.

We believe good can grow anywhere.

That is why we are committed to GroMoreGood, everywhere.

Male Narrator: And also by...