Towards the end of our vector unit in Pre Cal, we start discussing the third dimension. Despite living in the third dimension, it's always fun to hear kids go "oh, I always thought there was a z..." In the past I have had issues creating a visual for them as to what a 3D vector looks like. The whole "into the board" and "out of the board" sort of works. There have also been moments of trying to rubber band a bunch of meter sticks together or vainly trying to hold 3 of them up at one time. This year I went a little large scale:
It's hard to see, but I ran twine to simulate a 3D coordinate space. It took about 15 minutes to set up and I did it as they were working on something else. It made navigating the room a tad interesting, BUT I think it was a nice visual. So I could run out to the origin and discuss where a vector with various +/- values for components would end up. We also identified the 4 quadrants we know and love and tried to determine how many sections 3D space gives us (lowest guess 6, highest guess 32!?). I pointed out the land of sunshine and rainbows that is +++ and the land of rainstorms and gloom of - - - . The following day the kids construct a more compact version of 3D space and mount some vectors inside. More on that in the future. My photos section (day 98 and 99) has a peek into the prototyping phase.