Subject: Re: The WOW effect
From: Martha Haehl (haehl@kcmetro.cc.mo.us)
Date: Tue May 02 2000 - 19:00:53 EDT
Thanks for the correction. Actually I did mention catenary in class--but it
was amazingly close to a parabola.
Martha
----- Original Message -----
From: Abraham S. Mantell <mantell@polar.sunynassau.edu>
To: Martha Haehl <haehl@kcmetro.cc.mo.us>
Cc: <mathedcc@archives.math.utk.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, May 02, 2000 1:05 AM
Subject: Re: The WOW effect
>
>
> 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
>
> mantell@sunynassau.edu
>
>
> 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
> >
> >
> >
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