Soda Ban and Math.......Compatible?

At first this post seemed like a daunting task. To avoid it I spent countless hours watching YouTube videos and British TV dramas on Netflix. I imagine this is what some of my future students will also do instead of getting to homework right away. I was unmotivated to write this because I could not see a connection the soda ban had on my future math classroom or how I would teach it in relation to math. The more I thought about and the more I read on the ban I slowly began to realize that there were a few ways math could be used.

In regards to cups and different sizes, I could use math to help students learn about different geometrical shapes. One such shape would be a conical frustrum (also known as a truncated cone). This shape resembles the shape of peanut butter cups, there are some activities you can do with this (http://exvertigo.wordpress.com/2011/02/14/peanut-butter-cup-geometry/). Another example would be the rolling cup activity
(http://kentoncountymdc.wikispaces.com/file/view/l17_modeling_rolling_cups_alpha_complete.pdf). This is where students working with different cups and their dimensions.

Also, there are some ways in which all students can be actively engaged in learning about how the ban and math relate. For example, students could be given a word problem such as:
You have a cup that holds 4.125 cups of liquid. You decide to fill it up with Sprite. You know that every 8 ounces of Sprite has 96 calories. If you drank the entire cup, how many calories would you have consumed?
Although this example seems trivial, it would help students to convert units of measurements and to think about how many calories are being consumed. To alter this problem and relate it more to the kids, I would bring in different cup sizes, have them pick the size they drink most often, and have them "count" the calories they consume each time they have this size filled with their favorite drink.
Along this line, I could have students look at how calories are determined do some of their own calculations on foods that they like. I would then have them break down the calorie count per ounce of food for one serving size.

Some of these examples are slightly more interesting and engaging for the students, whereas the other examples get them to think about math concepts in a more practical way. The first two activities only relate to the soda ban in that it uses different types of cups, but it would be a way to engage students in thinking about cups in a new light. Like I said at the beginning, this post was difficult for me from the start because it has been challenging to try to incorporate soda into the math classroom other than setting rules against soda.

"The pleasure we obtain from music comes from counting, but counting unconsciously. Music is nothing by unconscious arithmetic." ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.