Triangles

One of the main complaints about math is that people don’t see the connection to their everyday life. Do people think so because math is abstract or because it is presented in a very abstract way? The moment of wonder comes when children can touch a triangle and change it and see it working in everyday objects like the slides in a playground.

Interaction: dynamic demonstration on any triangle created by the user

Description

Can you learn geometry just drawing?

Triangles is another learning project that tries to explain visually the geometry, properties and importance of triangles in our daily life. It tries to do so with interactive and visual demonstrations of properties of triangles and with real life problems. Written in ActionScript 3 using Adobe FlexBuilder ®.

Read a more detailed report about the Triangles project (in Spanish).

Award

Honorific Mention in the International Contest Science on Stage (Hispanic Countries and Portugal) organized by CSIC (High Council for Scientific Research), ICMAT (Mathematical Science Institute), RSEF (Royal Spanish Physics Society) and UNED (National Distance Learning University).

Motivation & Process

Sometimes, children have difficulties understanding math concepts because they are too abstract or because “they don’t see it”.

Sometimes, children have difficulties understanding math concepts because they are too abstract or because “they don’t see it”. That is the case with many theorems demonstrations and problems. So in this project I tried to explore the possibilities of having visual demonstrations of theorems and some interactive assistance to help visualize and solve real life problems.

I also concentrated on making an application that is easily updated and customized by teachers so that it could be used for any kind of teaching method based on Adobe Flash ®.

In order to achieve this goal, I created a “AS3 Geometry Library” and the framework for the application so that it was easily updated and other people could create their own exercises and content.

Visual Demonstrations & Problems

Can we design real problems that look actually real?

The user can draw any triangle inside a canvas and all its properties are displayed. There is always a question so that students explore the concept that they usually don’t understand. Visual animations demonstrate the solutions drawn by students. For example, watch out the Pythagora’s interactive visual demonstration.

The problem is set with a background photography over which you can draw and work. Students can draw semitransparent triangles over it and get all their triangles numerical properties. One of them, or a combination of them are the solutions of the problem. Sometimes, more than one triangle have to be drawn.