Basic Angle properties

I created these questions for my Year 7 class after a fairly disastrous lesson when I made a leap that was far too big for that class.  We had already had a couple of lessons where we had looked at angles as a measure of turn, using a protractor and the basic angle facts, using some of the resources from @mathsjem‘s great blog post here.  Although they could do the basic angle facts separately, I wanted to mix them up just enough that they could appreciate the differences between them and then gradually move onto multi-step problems.  I couldn’t find any questions that were right, so I ended up creating 3 pages of questions with gradual variation at each stage.  I gave them these one sheet at a time and we had a lot more success. Phew!

I’m sharing these as a Word document so you can chop and change what you need for your classes.

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The angle defines the ratio of side lengths in a right angle triangle

This post shows how to use Geogebra to demonstrate this fundamental truth in geometry and hopefully demystify Trigonometry to a certain extent.

As with all things Geogebra, I always try to start with a blank sheet (see other posts on this here and here).  This time, I’m not using the Geogebra app itself but just launching it from within a Chrome browser window which works pretty well.

Once it is launched, I right click in the middle to remove the axes, but I am going to leave the grid on.

Then I create the triangle by constructing a line, a perpendicular line…

…and a third point which I then join to create a triangle using the polygon tool.

Next, measure the base angle of the triangle remembering the convention that angles are measured in an anti-clockwise direction.

The next bit is a tad fiddly. You need to right click on the line segment to change the label to “value”.  Then do the same for the other two sides of the triangle so that you now have one angle and all three side labelled.

So far, this has taken about 2 minutes to create from a blank screen.  You could do it in advance of the lesson, but I think it is worth doing it in front of the class, maybe having practiced it a couple of times.  Using “something I created earlier” is less powerful – it looks like some sort of trick, somehow.

Now you have everything set up you can start moving the points as shown here.

I start by moving point B, thus keeping the angle fixed.  I would ensure students have calculators in front of them and ask them to calculate opposite divided by adjacent. Then move the triangle to get different values for side lengths. Then do the calculation again. The answer is the same, of course.  I might ask them how they could get that directly from the angle (tan angle).  Depending on where the discussion goes with that, I might then move on to look at sin and cos.

Finally, I always like to talk about how things were done in the old days, being careful to point out that I’m not that old and that I didn’t actually use these…

I explain that the sin button on your calculator is basically just looking up the values in the sin column of a table like this – not actually true, I know, but it helps understand what’s going on so that’s OK for me!

 

 

Exterior Angles of a Polygon and other shapes

I find some students like to memorise this, or at least the first two or three rows and then remember that we keep adding 180 for extra size.

Reason being – an extra triangle.

I feel that using exterior angles is more satisfying.  I find myself walking around an imaginary hexagon in my classroom with arm out stretched.

Here is a very nice Geogebra visualisation of this:

Exterior Angle Collections: REVAMPED! Modify at https://t.co/zXdRkaQEym @geogebra @panlepan @solvemymaths @giohio @gogeometry @NCTM #MTBoS pic.twitter.com/1dgxkNwhgh

— Tim Brzezinski (@dynamic_math) July 16, 2017

And here’s an activity which reinforces this idea.  Use a pencil as an arrow.  Does it always rotate through 360?  Does it always turn the same direction?  Use algebra, maybe?

 

 

Circle Theorems with Geogebra – Part 2

This is the second post in this series.  Part 1 is here.

 

1, Tangents

What is a tangent?  If you look at a line and a circle, it can either not touch the circle at all, cut it in two places, or if we are really careful, just touch it in exactly one place.

The special thing about a tangent is that there is only one line that can form a tangent at any point on the circle. If you move the line then the point of contact also moves.  Geogebra works by drawing both tangents from a point to the circle.  By putting points at the intersect you can see how they move.

As you connect the points on the circumference to the centre, stop to ask what we know about the lines that have been drawn here.  Then what do we notice about the two tangent lines and radius as we move them?

To prove the point we can measure the angle between the radius and the tangent:

And measure some lines too, whilst moving things around a bit:

We can deduce that DE = FD, by drawing in one more line and proving that we have congruent triangles AED and AFD.

2, Cyclic Quadrilaterals

What is a quadrilateral? How many lines, how many vertices? So what is a cyclic quadrilateral? Once you’ve established this, draw one.

Then go round measuring the angles. Before you move one of the points, ask students to predict what will change and what will stay the same.

 

 

 

 

Angle as a measure of turn

Angles in parallel lines is a topic that doesn’t usually feel too tricky to teach, but I often feel that I am just telling them “this is how it is” without giving a good explanation.

Inspired by a Twitter discussion on this Brilliant task, I’ve had a rethink:

From @brilliantorg pic.twitter.com/UpoQQhanxm

— Jo Morgan (@mathsjem) February 2, 2017

I use Geogebra a lot. It’s a powerful tool which somehow seems more powerful when you start with a blank page rather than something that has already been created. And angles in parallel lines is quick and easy enough to create on Geogebra:

Whilst doing this, I would want to move things around a bit to show that the two lines can move but stay parallel whereas the third line can move by moving the points.

This is the point where I previously might have just started measuring angles and showing what stays the same and changes as I moved the lines.

But it has struck me that this is a good opportunity to reinforce the idea of degrees as a measure of turn.  I often use a simple “Guess the angle” game like this.

I ask students to estimate the angle and show me on mini-whiteboards. Something as simple as this can cause great excitement when someone gets it exactly correct!  But it also reinforces the idea of degrees as a measure of turn from one line to another.

So, back to parallel lines, I am trying to show that the reason that alternate angles and corresponding angles are equal is because after turning one way an then back the other I end up pointing in the same direction.  And the reason co-interior angles sum to 180° is because I end up pointing in the opposite direction.

So, here is one that I did make earlier.  I have set it up so you can see the actual lines turning with the degrees increasing as they do so. I need to convince my learners that you can move from the first arrow to the second arrow by moving down the transverse line without changing direction.  Because of that, I will need to turn through the same angle to land back onto the parallel line:

And here is the same idea for Corresponding Angles:

I’d be really interested to hear any thoughts on this as a pedagogy – please leave comments below.

What’s the missing angle?

Some great questions here from @solvemymaths.  Depending on the class, I might present 4 of these and then get them to try creating their own using the idea of regular polygons.  Regular polygons seem to be quite popular on the new GCSE.

All these puzzles are constructed using regular shapes.

Source: What’s the missing angle?

The paper napkin trigonometry trick with a smattering of Pythagorean triples.

Take a piece of paper and do the following:

1. Make it into a square (interesting discussion on best way to do this).
2. Fold in half then unfold so you have created crease along a vertical line of symmetry
3. Then take any corner and fold to the midpoint of the opposite edge. Press down to make a crease along the fold line
4. Unfold and now investigate all the triangles you have created, i.e. can you work out their lengths?

Here are some pictures, which also give some hints, although not a complete solution.  The result is very satisfying although I would love to find a way to show this that doesn’t require reams of algebra.  Any takers??

A broken clock

I walked into my classroom this morning and noticed my clock was broken. Not just stopped but really broken, can you see why?

It reminded me of a nice problem solving task which is sort of to do with angles but actually much more to do with ratio and proportion.

I wrote the following on the board:

For a normal clock, what is the angle between the hour hand and the minute hand at the following times:
1) 15:00
2) 13:30
3) 10:15
4) 17:45
5) 9:26

There is a significant range of challenge in these questions.  15:00 – straightforward, right.  As soon as you start moving the minute hand away from 12, you need to consider the fraction of (360/12) degrees that the hour hand moves.  12.30 might be the best option for a question 2 if you really want to scaffold it.  You also might want to squeeze a few more in between Qu 4 and 5.  e.g. 14.40, 15.20.

Next time I do it, I won’t write them up all in one go, but will keep adding to them as I can see learners making progress. Or ask students to challenge themselves by creating their times which might work better in a mixed attainment classroom.

These can all be done without a calculator. It demonstrates how useful it is to have 360 degrees in a circle and 60 minutes in an hour because they have so many factors.

A nice build on this is this question from an OCR Booklet of problem-solving questions.