First Talks of YHS Second Term

For the last couple of weeks I did not prepare presentations, but sat on the lessons and walked around afterward to help with homework problems. I have also been trying more to learn the students' names, so it has been a good time for me to practice in my head with the seating chart to learn these. The first three hours are the same as they were last term, but since the semester change we have gotten a new fifth-hour class. This class is for students re-taking the first half of Algebra I, and they have a similar personality and mindset of last term's fifth-hour class, which was re-taking the second half of Geometry. A lot of them lack confidence in math, and they tend to get distracted easily. I hope through my individual attention, I can help many of them boost their confidence and realize their potential to do math.

This week I wanted to bring in another discussion to get them thinking about applications again, and a separate talk to formally introduce myself to the fifth-hour students. For the Geometry classes, I prepared a follow-up talk on roller coasters to remind them about what we discussed last time (the strength of triangles/trusses in structures) and bring in some new perspective. They have spent a lot of time recently learning about properties of angles and triangles, so my goal was to show them how angles can be applicable to design. I showed them a picture of the Millennium Force at Cedar Point, and zoomed into one of the truss structures that made a right triangle. In a very basic demonstration of the statics analysis, I mentioned that the weight of everything above the triangle would be coming downward onto the top joint, and we agreed that it would propagate downward through the beams. We then discussed how it would change if the angle were expanded or contracted, and concluded that it is important for engineers to take angle measurements into account to ensure the safety of such a design. I then brought up a larger truss structure and we discussed which angles were congruent (using theorems from geometry), and I mentioned why these congruent angles are useful for analyzing the structure. I brought up the idea of trigonometry and mentioned that it was useful for this type of analysis, but since they haven't learned trig yet, that might have brought about more confusion than my intention of whetting their appetite for trig. Overall, I think this discussion went very well in 2nd and 3rd hours, but 1st hour was still very quiet (and not quite awake yet).

Fifth hour went fairly well, and I used a powerpoint that I gave last term for introducing myself and briefly explaining who I am, where I'm from, and what I do. When I introduced engineering, I had a few pictures of things that are heavily influenced by mechanical engineering design, including one of a Tesla Roadster, which I explained was an electric car. This actually spurred a lot of questions from the group, and many of them were curious as to how it works, how you charge it, and the practicalities of an electric car. I was impressed with their ability to immediately identify the weaknesses of electric cars, and explained that these are the reasons why we don't see a lot of them on the road. However, I was disappointed with the way they asked the questions - many of them would try to ask questions at the same time, and they didn't listen to my responses, so I got the same questions again and again. They seemed to think that I have first hand experience with these and know every detail about their maintenance and performance, but I unfortunately had to break the news to them that I don't have $100,000 to spend on a car. Since this topic seems interesting to them, I will try to bring in a discussion centered on electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles, incorporating algebra as something that designers need to use.