Parabolas are tough????

I submit the above two animated gifs (made in GeoGebra) for the sake of those who think that ellipses and parabolas are too complicated to understand.

The 1st gif, yielding an ellipse, only requires that the red segment and the blue segment always have the same combined length.

The 2nd gif, the parabola, only requires that the two dotted lines are always equal in length.

That's it. The rest comes from there.

So Sine and Cosine are related? (or...have you ever seen the rain?)

Dynamic geometry can help show relationships that printed textbooks can only hint at.  If all you saw in this was that the getting from the cosine graph to the sine graph all you had to do was "shove" it to the right a bit, you'd be well on your way.

For the more utilitarian, here is a more well known device.

For more, see www.davemath.com

Do you Know or Remember?

Inside every triangle is imprisoned a very special circle. Did you know that? It is called the inscribed circle, and it is one of the many connections between circles and triangles.

 

A shipping question relates to this: if you were shipping a million sections of fragile pipe, would you consider a triangular-shaped box? If so, what type of triangle would be best?

 

When I was in school the closest I got to diagrams like above were those frozen in time and printed in books. Students can know learn about such things in a much more dynamic environment. Make sure they can and do!!!!

For more examples, go to www.davemath.com

 

 

 

 

Dynamic Geometry Opens Doors!

The sky is the limit as to what can be designed using the basics of GeoGebra.
Click here to see the actual file behind this graphic.
It is all basic Geometry (with just a smattering of trig so I could get flashing lights to work when the file was converted to an animated gif.

Software such as GeoGebra just be used as a math motivator as well as a math tool.

Dynamic Geometry is the Way to a Child's Brain!!

The above was created in GeoGebra some basic geometry such as midpoints, chords, rotation, with a dose of basic trig. Doable by ant middle-schooler in a short bit of time. (Exported as animated gif, then shrunk using Fireworks to reduce file size and make it fit here.)

Amazing

FOX just interrupted a moment of silence in honor of Nelson Mandela prior to the Eagles-Lions game for a Cialis ad!!!!!!

Another new story about math in schools

"American 15-Year-Olds Lag, Mainly in Math, on International Standardized Tests" goes the title of the article in the NY Times of this past week. (see here)

Who knows what might be possible if the teachers and students had the opportunity and the teachers had the knowledge base and the resources.

A simple item such as below, a great motivating skill for a number of students, is not considered often. Since it is not testable, it is probably falling further outside the arena.

GeoGebra allows the user to manipulate images.
Here a simple 2-blade propeller was made to rotate using GeoGebra.
A simple task.

Check out http://www.angelfire.com/ny3/golfgolf/amtnys/AMTNYS2014/Plan2014.htm for other examples.