Ran across this fun little clip called Coyote’s Catapult.
A great lead-in to a couple of quadratic problems trying to decide if Coyote’s catapult will reach Road Runner high above on the ledge of a cliff. What fun! And if not, how much will it cost Wylie Coyote to get one powerful enough to reach Road Runner?
There are somemother examples of Toy Rockets, Team USA Soccer, Fuel Economy and part of a lesson plan from way back when…on Maximizing Area. Even in the mid-90s, I realized the importance of multiple representations.
When we begin looking at maximizing area, I give students ziplock bags of 1 inch plastic tiles ask them to create as many different rectanglesmas they can with a given perimeter of 18 inches. Let them play for a while, then share their rectangles, recording their dimensions in a table, considering WxL and LxW as 2 different rectangles. A quick run through of the activity. Which leads to discussion of how to determine vertex algebraically.
the radical rational... 