Day Two

8am
Calculus. I talked about what we had done yesterday with finding a line tangent to y=x² at x=3. In algebra, we find the slope when we are given two points. We know one point, (3,9), and there is no other point that we know. [Last semester, at least one person used the y-intercept of the tangent line they had graphed as their second point. I liked that, but forgot to mention it today.]

I asked them to give their definitions of the word tangent.
First student definition of tangent: A line that touches the curve in one place only.
Sue's counter-example: I drew y=x³ and drew at tangent line at about x=1. They agreed that I had drawn a tangent. Then I extended the curve and the line. They cross at x = -2. I suggested that we could add the word nearby, and maybe this would work.

Second student definition of tangent: A line that touches the curve but doesn't cross it.
Sue's counter-example: I asked them what the tangent to y=x³ at x=0 would look like. They told me it would be horizontal. I drew it in. Hmm. (I told them that later we'll talk about concavity, and showed it with my hand curved. I said that I think the only time the tangent line crosses the curve is when it's tangent at an inflection point. Is that true? I should try to prove it.)

Third student definition of tangent: A line that determines the direction of the curve.
I think this one is about as good as we can get at this point, although it's hard to turn it into something precise. I talked about thinking of the curve as a road, and your point being a car driving along the curve. Its headlights make half the tangent line, and its taillights make the other half.

Talked just a bit about history of calculus, and gravity. Got some volunteers who will drop a heavy and a light object, and see what happens.

Then we started our circle activity. I had a picture of a circle of radius 10cm on the back of the handout. I asked for the radius, a rough estimate of the area, and a more careful estimate of the area. (I asked them to pretend they knew no formulas. Next I had them fold a round coffee filters in half through the middle over and over, then cut it into wedges, and play with them. Tomorrow we'll do the area formula from that. Today I gave the definition of pi (C/D), and talked about how C=2*pi*r comes easily from this definition. I got a few volunteers who will measure around a circle and across it, using string, and will bring in their string tomorrow. Area is different...



10am
Linear Algebra. I used a desk corner as the origin, drew the x and y axes with my finger along its edges, and the z axis coming up from the corner. I asked them to figure out (in groups of four) what the equation x+y+z=1 would look like. I heard someone say circle. It is not at all obvious to most of them yet that it will be a plane. But we got there.

Was that before or after we worked on the definition of a linear equation? Yesterday I had asked for their definitions from their heads. I got four volunteers today (yay!) to give me their definitions to put on the board. They were all different, and none matched the official definition. So, after I went over the official definition from our textbook, I asked them to use that to prove or disprove each of the statements given by students. I think this will help them with proofs and with what a linear equation is.

Next I continued with the problem we had done, algebra style (no matrix), yesterday. I talked about computers, and representing it with just the coefficients, and wrote the matrix. I showed them the matrix that would represent the solution, and said our steps will be similar to those we used yesterday, but our order will be different. We did our same problem matrix-style, and I identified the three elementary row operations as we used them. (We never used the swap rows operation, but I talked about when it would be needed, and how you'd never do that with the algebra-style method.)

I finished up with one book problem.


11am
Pre-Calc. Stamped their homework. Had them share with their group the list of 5 problems they couldn't do. Had them each pick a problem from their partner's list, that they would later explain to their partner. Some people working hard; others feeling unsure what to do. (Everyone willing to participate.)

Showed them y=mx+b on desmos, but got caught up in another problem. We'll come back to this tomorrow.

They worked on finding a_n, with the hint that it might be good to find a₁₀₀ first, for the sequence 12, 17, 22, 27. (I got starting value and jump size from students. Good it was five - some people struggle with arithmetic.) We worked on that a while, and then did a problem from 12.1 (Stewart) that turned out to be geometric. It was good to see the similarities.

I loved my day. Now I'm off to the chiropractor.