Tag Archives: cosine

How can you combine linguini and trigonometry?

The other night, my son was discussing what he was learning in trig class and it made me reminisce about the days that I taught trig.   When I first started teaching that class, it scared me.  If you made the tiniest mistake, the students turned on you like wolves.  After a while, I got my groove and turned the class into a great inquiry-based course that I adored teaching.  One of my favorite lessons from the beginning of the year is an activity called linguini trig.  I adapted it from an article I found called “Spaghetti and the Sine Curve” that appeared in The Mathematics Teacher in the 90’s.  The whole lesson is an amazing way to show students how the trigonometric functions are graphed and it gives them a solid foundation in periodic graphs.  I decided to replicate the lesson on video (about 15 minutes long) for teachers to see how the lesson looks from start to finish or students could view it to solidify understanding of the concepts of graphing.  The link to the video on youtube is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9umDGwytyos.   I hope you enjoy!    Here are some documents you need for the lesson: graph template001 graph template002

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