Three days after I arrived I registered for the "Scientists in Schools" project, in which a Scientist (that would be me, ha!) partners up with a teacher from a school and they share and do interesting stuff for the benefit of the kids at the school. I thought it was quite a cool idea and I think that I would have appreciated it when i was young (not so sure about now though) ... After three months and a police database check (i kid you not) I was finally approved and got a partnership with a MATHS (!!) prof in some secondary school (can't say the name Google!)
It's gonna be a bit difficult at first because while the math level we are talking about (level 10) is very very very low (they do quadratics! in year 10! ) both the teacher and i are total noobs at this.
Nonetheless, we were thinking about how to make students see that the maths they are learning is applied everywhere in real life. So far, examples we could come up with were: a) gps triangularization and b) angry birds (because of the trajectory and hence the quadratics)
So i ask you, esteemed council, what other examples of quadratics (ax^2 + bx + c = 0) or simple statistics in real life would you have?
9 comments:
Actually, angry birds sound very good! How about trying out a small iPad game, with the graphics and sounds ripped off from angry birds, where you also have an input fields for the parameters (in this case angle and speed) - you just need to enter the parameters, and shoot. with a message if you hit the target.
Of course, the downside is that trajectory is not quadratic equation :P
yes, but to make the bloody thing would take me quite a while ...
hmm... how about physics of acceleration? that quadratic equation to find acceleration... too lazy to type it out on my iPod touch....
hmm... quadratic equations plotted out form curves.. surely there's some scientific thingy related to those cubes that the kids might find fascinating!
To make it it would take you 1 day :)
As long as you don't include physics, just have an angry bird image that you launch towards a fixed piggy target, with a message at the end if you got him or not, it's done in minutes - i said 1 day to include getting used to Xcode and install certificates etc.
@dor : that's exactly what I want to say but! one day in and i'm still struggling !!
Uh........hahah..mm..I do not do quadratics in drugs..how abt a simple bell curve in life. Its a curve formed by a quadratic eqaution. Most things in life fit into a bell curve rite? Outliers, majority, probability, GRADES! Haha..U all really are GEEKs. And I know tt becos marian said 'the blackberry playbook has a good OS but a sucky UI'. I knew all the short forms and what he was talking abt. UI..lk hello... How did I ever know it means user interface.....
the trajectory of your pee decides whether it lands outside the urinal.
-jensen
Hey how about flight? Easy to let x be thrust and y be weight. Easy to increase the equation's complexity too with upthrust and air drag.
From paper planes (an example of the game would be below):
http://armorgames.com/play/7598/flight
To jet engines:
http://www.geaviation.com/education/index.html
thank you adrian!! Jensen, somehow i don't think my teacher will let me say that during class :)
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