Post Tagged with: "High school geometry"

Classroom Cameo — Geometry Classes Create Artistic Pythagorean Spirals

Students in Mrs. Wilson’s geometry classes recently completed a project applying their knowledge of the Pythagorean Theorem to create spiral artwork that is on display on a second floor bulletin board.

Wilson said the 8th, 9th, and 10th grade students in her Honor Geometry and Geometry classes were asked to create a set of right triangles by using the hypotenuse of one triangle as the leg of the next triangle.

“After drawing 17 right triangles, the students creatively transformed their figures into an artistic masterpiece of their choice and their really did an excellent job,” Wilson said. The week-long project also required the students to calculate the hypotenuse of each triangle and estimate the length of the hypotenuse of the last triangle based on their calculations.

Several of the students who completed the project posed with Wilson next to the bulletin board. The students, from left, are: Aine Dorsey, Ava Nixon, David O’Donnell, Alek Stein, and Cody Weyman.

 

Classroom Cameo: High School Students Measure Their Shadows for Trigonometry Project

Students in our high school geometry class headed outdoors to the school track for two days in late May to measure their shadows — an inter-active assignment that was part of their unit on trigonometry.

Faculty member Gina Wilson came up with the creative hands-on activity as a way to help the students use trigonometry ratios, such as Sine, Cosine, and Tangent, to find missing side lengths and angles in triangles.

“The project incorporated all that the students have been learning in our trigonometry unit and allowed them to practice their knowledge in an unconventional setting,” Mrs. Wilson said. For the project, the students had to measure their heights and the length of their shadow and then use trig ratios to calculate the angle of elevation to the sun.

“The students were surprised to find that their shadows were longer earlier in the morning, which effected the angles,” Mrs. Wilson said. “It was fun to watch them make connections like that throughout the project.”