L’Hospital’s Weight Problem: Testing the Boundaries Between Mathematics and Physics and Between Application and Modelling

Although this classical optimisation problem can be considered an application, some of the difficulties it brings to students have to do with modelling. We show how an activity, designed from this problem and trialled in a transitional mathematics course of a technical engineering school in Montreal, allows students to experience, within the goals and practical boundaries of the course, some elements of the modelling process and to develop skills useful for that purpose. As such, it can serve as inspiration for gradually introducing modelling considerations in content-driven mathematics courses that do not traditionally allot time for exploring open situations. The crossing into physics, despite the strong potential envisioned at the design stage, proved to be more difficult to implement.