In a previous article, firstname.lastname@example.org (Martha W Merson ALRI)) says: >> >>I teach an intensive summer geometry class in Santa Cruz, CA. It's 4 >>hours a day and the kids and I are suffering from the heat. Any >>suggestions on what we can do at the beach that I can relate to geometry. >>( We are going to start similar triangles on Monday)
Locate Town A and Town B with a small heap of rocks and challenge your students to find the best location along the shore to locate a pumping station so that the combined distances from pumping station to town A plus the distance from pumping station to town B is a minimum.>> Similar triangles is one possible way of solving this problem.
Do some huge geometric constructions with string as the compass and sticks as the pencils.
Bring a whole bunch of "junk" containers...plastic bottles, tin cans, sandwich keepers. Challenge the students to arrange them in order from largest volume to smallest volume and devise a way to test whether their arrangement was correct. You could give several groups the same type of containers and have the groups work independently for a while and then compare results.
-- Linda Dodge Math Consultant Frontier Regional High School South Deerfield, MA