Mr. R.’s World of Math

Page 2: Stuck Inside a Basketball

basketball spinning on finger“Joe, can you check the hallway to see what he’s doing out there? We don’t have all day.”
Joe got up and walked into the hallway. He came back spinning the basketball on his finger.
“Zander wasn’t out there, but I found his ball,” smiled Joe.
“OK, that’s strange, let me have the ball please,” I said.
Joe walked towards me to give me the ball, but it dropped off his finger and onto the classroom carpet.
“Oops,” said Joe as the ball bounced a few times before he could pick it up. When Joe bent down to get it, we all heard a strange sound coming from inside the ball.
“What’s that sound?” asked Jackie.
“I don’t know,” said Joe, “but it sounds like a voice is coming from inside this basketball.”
Joe held the ball up to his ear and listened.
“I don’t know how to tell everyone this, but I think Zander is inside this basketball.”
“Inside the basketball?” I asked. 
“Yeah, isn’t that his voice?” Joe asked, as everyone got really quiet.
We all heard Zander’s voice clearly echoing from inside the ball.
“It’s me,” cried Zander, “help me get out of here!”
“What are you talking about?” laughed Joe, “how could you be inside a basketball?”
bike pump“I don’t know,” yelled Zander’s voice from inside the ball, “I went into the hallway, and saw this weird person type of person. He sprayed me with a liquid, and then he squeezed me through the air-valve of the ball with a pump!”
“You fit through that little air hole?” laughed Jake, “How? You must be real tiny?”
“The spray shrunk me. I am tiny!”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, but weird things had happened before, so I got up to check the hallway to see if there was any strange person type of person outside my classroom.
When I entered the hallway, I didn’t see anyone, but I did see a small basketball pump laying on the floor. spray bottleWhen I walked over to pick it up, a strange person type of person jumped from behind a locker and sprayed me with some sort of liquid.
“Hey, what do you think you’re doing! You can’t be in this school!” I yelled, but as I yelled, I realized I was getting smaller, and smaller, and smaller. Then I felt the strange person type of person pick me up between his fingers and drop me inside the air pump. One side of the pump was clear and I saw the person type of person walk into my classroom carrying me in the pump.

If each 2 sprays of the pump sprayed out 28 ounces of liquid, and the person type of person had sprayed me 16 times, how many ounces of liquid did he spray me with?

Enter the number of ounces here:

Your results

Join Mr. R. on YouTube