Thursday, February 4, 2010

My Favorite Conic

** Disclaimer** This blog entry was created as a requirement for a course I took at Central Michigan University. I kinda liked it, and it definately relates to math, so I copied it to this blog. Feel free to play the role of the student and post your own responses!

We all have one (although some of us have so repressed our inner math geek that we are unaware). We all have a favorite conic section! We have selected our favorites for a variety of unique reasons, the sum of which is as unique as we are. Many senators have selected the ellipse, just as many with poor urinary tracks (link1, link2) have done. Baseball sluggers hate parabolas, but artillery generals live and die by them. The folks at Ticonderoga love hyperbolas, as did the Apollo 13 crew.

But what about you, what is your favorite conic??? Myself, I love a good circle any day, especially for desert! Pi anybody?

Return to class wiki.

Video Textbook

This site has a video textbook on the concept of dimensions. I really like the way they talk about connecting the vertices of an object to their shadows as a way to visualize the corresponding object in the next dimension. I think I might use this with my students in the future, especially when discussing higher dimensions.

http://www.dimensions-math.org/Dim_reg_E.htm

Sierpinski Doritos

This is a great video:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMYqzU1nZew