When the Friday Fave was a child, truck driving was the coolest possible job.
CB radios, convoys, a life on the road; it seemed everyone aspired to
long-haul trucking. It’s unclear whether the nature of the work has changed,
or whether society has just developed new romantic notions about other lines
of work. Whatever the case, the Friday Fave will always harbor a nostalgic
fondness for trucks and the open road.
Which brings us to this week’s Friday Fave—Slanty Hills—your chance to be in the driver’s seat. Pick your tunnel, observe the consequences, and figure out how to warn the others in your convoy.
The mathematics of slopes, angles, the tangent function, and percent grade are all brought to bear on this problem of multiple representations. Students come at these representations from many different angles (heh)—they measure; they do a card sort; they put things in order.
So if you’re a person responsible for teaching angles and tangents, get your
students to truck on over to Slanty Hills. Maybe it’ll be your new
Friday Fave?