Dancing euclidean proofs

I think this concept of drawing in the sand and the idea of the constraint of their bodies is a brilliant way to make use of the land. I definitely believe that this idea needs to be more incorporated into a classroom. Classrooms have so many geometrical objects. For example, for a unit on surface area or volume, the teacher could make use of different constructions of the tables. I remember, when I took an undergraduate educational course on teaching and learning, the professor made two paper constructions and proved that the volume of a cylinder was greater than that of a cone even though the cylinder was much larger in height. She then filled the paper constructions with rice. What I thought was clever was that the proof tied nicely by taking the rice from one container and putting it into the other one which demonstrated it visually. I think this idea of using grains, whether it’s grains of rice, sand, quinoa, etc. is very useful as it’s inexpensive and can be used in various applications.

One other idea that stood out to me that I really hadn’t thought about was the mention of the loss of perspective and how they used the drone to reactive the 3D view. However, what caught my interest was the idea of what we are trying to emphasize. Particularly, the idea of how black and white photography clarifies what a colour picture might obscure. For me, I connect this to math in the sense of where the observer is looking from in relation to a given math situation. For example, in physics/math there is this idea of parallax:  the observed displacement of an object caused by the change of the observer's point of view.


Comments

  1. Erica HuangNovember 24, 2024 at 11:25 AM

    Great post, Zain! I love the example of your professor using paper constructions and rice to demonstrate volume; it’s a creative and hands-on approach. You’ve also brought up some interesting points about perspectives -- the use of drones, black-and-white photography, and parallax in math and physics.

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