2-5.2 Links To Information For Teachers

Vocabulary

supply - Total amount of a product (good or service) available for purchase at any price.
demand - Total amount of a product (good or service) that a consumer wants to purchase at any specified price.
prices go up and down in the marketplace – If a product is not selling the company may drop the price so that it is competitive with similar products.

The best way to explain this is to talk about the cafeteria in the school. The cafeteria workers make two meats each day. They make 100 hamburgers and 100 hot dogs. This is the supply. After they are eaten there is no more.
If they put all of the meats out when the third graders come into the cafeteria, and the third graders eat all of the hot dogs and none of the hamburgers, then the demand is for hot dogs and the cafeteria knows to make more hot dogs the next time.
If this same situation were to happen in a real restaurant and they had a bunch of food left the restaurant may decide to drop the price on the hamburgers below the price of the hot dogs to get people to buy more hamburgers.