Tuesday, May 03, 2011

Darth Vader Explains the Pythagorean Theorem

So I have spent much of the last two days trying to teach the Pythagorean Theorem to classes of 7th grades who are fully aware that there are less than 25 days left in the school year.

Yeah, it's been BIG fun.

Anyways, at some point I had a flashback to my own young teen years when Mr. John Smith (not even an alias - and yes, his wife was Mary) tried to learn me the Pythagorean Theorem while we were fixing a leaking section of his underground sprinkler system. Though I probably didn't fully learn the lesson, I do remember the effort that Mr. S put into the sprinkler fix.

With that in mind, I came across this jewel of geometry. So I shared it with most of my classes. In the end, maybe some kid will remember a little part of the stuff that Lord Vader and I have tried to present. And if nothing else, at least the kids were quiet for 2 minutes and 50 seconds. And at this time of year, that is something...

3 comments:

Diplo_Daddy said...

Fantastic idea. Did it work?

Math isn't my cup of tea. I have to take my shoes off to count to twenty...

The Father of Five said...

Look at it this way... Having built the first Death Star, and then having to build a second one, I imagine Vader had to use the Pythagorean Theorem umpteen trillion times while drawing up the blueprints!

Dang if that little R2 droid didn't steal his first set of blueprints!!

Craig said...

If Darth Vader had been my teacher in school I would no doubt have been much better at math.