6-8
Tile floors are common in many homes and businesses. They are durable, beautiful, and can add value to the home or business but they can also be costly. In this lesson, students will create and estimate the cost of a tile floor design using geometric shapes, ratios, proportions, and percents. All cost estimates are based on the purchase of full boxes of tiles so students have to weigh cost against design considerations. Cost estimates also include labor and taxes for a more realistic estimate of what it costs for a great looking floor.
6-8
Students will conduct five experiments through stations to compare theoretical and experimental probability. The class data will be combined to compare with previously established theoretical probability.
6-8
Student will conduct a coin tossing experiment for 30 trials. Their results will be graphed and shows a line graph that progresses toward the theoretical probability. The graph will also allow for a representation of heads or tails throughout the experiment.
6-8
In this lesson, students will use formulas they have explored for the volume of a cylinder and convert them into the same volume for rectangular prisms while trying to minimize the surface area. Various real world cylindrical objects will be measured and converted into a prism to hold the same volume. As an extension, students may design and create a rectangular prism container according to their dimensions to compare and contrast with the cylinder.
9-12
Students explore and discover conic sections by cutting a cone with a plane. Circles, ellipses, parabolas, and hyperbolas are examined using the Conic Section Explorer tool. Physical manipulatives such as dough can optionally be used as well.
6-8, 9-12
In this lesson, students use polydrons to create nets of rectangular prisms. They discover that there are many configurations for rectangular prisms with the same volume, and determine that certain configurations minimize surface area. The lesson continues in a discovery activity related to building the most cost-efficient and appealing fish tank.
3-5
Students explore ways of building different basic shapes from triangles. They also investigate the basic properties of triangles, as well as relationships among other basic geometric shapes.
3-5
Students explore the importance of the side lengths of a triangle and when triangles can or cannot be constructed on the basis of these lengths.
3-5, 6-8
Students identify patterns in a geometrical figure (based on triangles) and build a foundation for the understanding of fractals.
6-8, 9-12
This lesson can be used for students to discover the relationship between dimension and volume. Students create two rectangular prisms and two cylinders to determine which holds more popcorn. Students then justify their observation by analyzing the formulas and identifying the dimension(s) with the largest impact on the volume.
