My Algebra Two students are in the thick of learning about conics – parabolas, ellipses, circles, and hyperbolas. I’ve just finished recording a series of screencasts about them, and I am posting them below for your enjoyment.
Why are they called conics? Well, we can construct them using cones, as illustrated by this demo, courtesy of
Here are my screencasts:
Conic Basics
The Parabola
The Ellipse
The Hyperbola
In a couple of earlier posts (here and here), I wrote about how my school has acquired a couple of MakerBot Replicator2 3D printers. The students are getting very excited about using them. One of my Honors Precalculus students even designed and printed a “Menurkey” – a combination Menorah and turkey – because Hanukkah and Thanksgiving coincide this year. Here’s a picture of the small prototype she printed first:
Thingiverse recently had a competition for the best math manipulative, and there were some really useful entries. I especially liked a conic section one designed by Karl Crosby. We have purchased some different colored plastic, so I went with green this time:
Next, I printed it out in two stages, so I could use two different colors of plastic. It turned out really well!
These are great for showing students how slicing a cone at various angles results in a circle, an ellipse, a parabola, or half a hyperbola. Until now, all the math teachers in my department shared a wooden one that was very expensive. Now I can print out a classroom set for almost nothing.
We just wrapped up our study of conic sections, which can be a pretty dry topic. So to liven things up, I had my precalculus students go on a scavenger hunt. These days, everyone has either a digital camera or phone with a camera, so everybody could participate. Here is the handout I gave them outlining the rules:
Conics Hide and Seek
Names____________________________________
Math is all around us, and in this activity, you are going to find some places where it is hiding. We have finished our study of conic sections (parabolas, circles, ellipses, and hyperbolas), so it’s time to have a scavenger hunt! Using your phone or digital camera, you and a partner will explore the campus and take a picture of at least one example of each type of conic. The team with the most points will get a prize. You are on your honor not to share your finds with other teams.
Here’s how many points each type of conic is worth:
Circle: 1 pt (maximum of 5 examples)
Ellipse: 2 pts
Parabola: 3 pts (remember, a parabola is not the same as a “U”!)
Hyperbola: 5 pts
You can submit your photos via email. Happy hunting!
They spent more than half of an 80-minute block combing the campus for examples of conics. Did this activity involve rigorous mathematics? No, but it was a lot of fun for the girls, and it opened their eyes to some of the ways math can describe the world around them. When we reviewed the teams’ submissions, there was a lot of discussion about whether certain shapes actually were parabolic, or ellipsoid, etc. All in all, a very useful activity.
Here is a sampler of the best submissions. The winning team took over 100 photos!
How many times have math teachers heard that question? I question the assumption underlying it – that math should only be learned if it has “real-life” application. I wonder if my colleagues who teach literature have to deal with that! Of course, math is worth studying in and of itself, just as poetry is.
That said, I do try to make connections between abstract mathematical concepts and things my students encounter in their lives. So, as my precalculus students wrapped up their investigations into parabolas, ellipses, and hyperbolas, we looked at some examples of how they occur in the real world. We took photos of the water coming out of a drinking fountain, the fireplace of our school’s library, and a flashlight’s beam when it is next to a wall. Then, we pasted the photos into Geometer’s Sketchpad, placed a grid over them, and came up with functions that model each conic section. They got very excited as they saw their function plots match the photos so closely. Hmm, maybe there is something to these crazy conics after all….
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