Subject: Re: The WOW effect
From: Abraham S. Mantell (mantell@polar.sunynassau.edu)
Date: Tue May 02 2000 - 02:05:31 EDT
Hello Martha,
It is always nice to show how "this stuff is useful"...however, you said
"... of course fell into a parabolic shape ..." I trust you mentioned to
the class that it is not exactly parabolic, but more accurately
represented by the hyperbolic cosine (cosh) function...as the true shape
resembles a "catenary"...yes?
Abe Mantell
On Mon, 1 May 2000, Martha Haehl wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I thought I would share something that we did in class that got the WOW
> effect when graphing parabolas. I was using the grapher tool of Interactive
> Math, but the same could be done with any graphing tool that will project
> the graph onto the white board or blackboard. We projected the coordinate
> grid onto the board and taped a hanging chain from 2 ends which of course
> fell into a parabolic shape. I intentionally did not center the parabola
> around the y-axis. We visually estimated the vertex, y-intercept and one
> other point, then students used the information to find the equation of the
> parabola. With the chain still taped to the board, we graphed the resulting
> quadratic function. Students were amazed (and so was I since they did the
> calculations) that the graph was almost identical to the hanging chain. It
> made a potentially dry topic interesting.
>
> Have a good end of term.
>
> Martha
>
>
> ****************************************************************************
> * To post to the list: email mathedcc@archives.math.utk.edu *
> * To unsubscribe, send mail to: mathedcc-unsubscribe@archives.math.utk.edu *
> * Archives at http://archives.math.utk.edu/hypermail/mathedcc/ *
> ****************************************************************************
>
****************************************************************************
* To post to the list: email mathedcc@archives.math.utk.edu *
* To unsubscribe, send mail to: mathedcc-unsubscribe@archives.math.utk.edu *
* Archives at http://archives.math.utk.edu/hypermail/mathedcc/ *
****************************************************************************
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b28 : Tue May 02 2000 - 02:28:53 EDT