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The Perfect Rugby Kick
This was inspired by the ever excellent Numberphile video which looked at this problem from the perspective of Geogebra. I thought I would look at the algebra behind this.
In rugby we have the situation that when a try is scored, there is an additional kick (conversion kick) which can be taken. This must be in a perpendicular line with where the try was scored, but can be as far back as required.
We can represent this in the diagram above. The line AB represents the rugby goals (5.6 metres across). For a try scored at point D, a rugby player can then take the kick anywhere along the line DC.
Let’s imagine a situation where a player has scored a try at point D – which is a metres from the rugby post at B. For this problem we want to find the distance, x for this value of a such that this maximises the value of θ . The larger the value of θ, the more of the rugby goal the player can aim at and so we are assuming that this is the perfect angle to achieve.
Making an equation:
We can use the diagram to achieve the following equation linking θ and x:
We can use Desmos to plot this graph for different values of a:
We can then find the maximum points from Desmos and record these
This then allows us to find the exponential regression line of the coordinates of the maximum points:
This regression line is given by the equation:
This graph is shown below:
We can also plot the x values of the maximum points against a to give the following linear regression line:
This graph is shown below:
This means that if we know the value of a we can now very easily calculate the value of x which will provide the optimum angle.
Bring in the calculus!
We can then see how close our approximations are by doing some calculus:
We can find the x coordinate of the maximum point in terms of a by differentiating, setting equal to 0 and then solving. This gives:
When we plot this (green) versus our earlier linear approximation we can see a very close fit:
And if we want to find an equation for optimum theta in terms of x we can also achieve this as follow:
When we plot this (green) we can also see a good fit for the domain required:
Conclusion
A really nice investigation – could be developed quite easily to score very highly as an HL IA investigation as it has a nice combination of modelling, trigonometry, calculus and generalised functions. We can see that our approximations are pretty accurate – and so we can say that a rugby player who scores a try a metres from the goal should then take the resultant conversion kick about a+2 metres perpendicular distance from the try line in order to maximise the angle to the goal.
If you are a teacher then please also visit my new site: intermathematics.com for over 2000+ pdf pages of resources for teaching IB maths!
Galileo’s Inclined Planes
This post is based on the maths and ideas of Hahn’s Calculus in Context – which is probably the best mathematics book I’ve read in 20 years of studying and teaching mathematics. Highly recommended for both students and teachers!
Hahn talks us though the mathematics, experiments and thought process of Galileo as he formulates his momentous theory that in free fall (ignoring air resistance) an object falling for t seconds will fall a distance of ct² where c is a constant. This is counter-intuitive as we would expect the mass of an object to be an important factor in how far an object falls (i.e that a heavier object would fall faster). Galileo also helped to overturned Aristotle’s ideas on motion. Aristotle had argued that any object in motion would eventually stop, Galileo instead argued that with no friction a perfectly spherical ball once started rolling would roll forever. Galileo’s genius was to combine thought experiments and real data to arrive at results that defy “common sense” – to truly understand the universe humans had to first escape from our limited anthropocentric perspective, and mathematics provided an opportunity to do this.
Inclined Planes
Galileo conducted experiments on inclined planes where he placed balls at different heights and then measured their projectile motion when they left the ramp, briefly ran past the edge of a flat surface and then fell to the ground. We can see the set up of one ramp above. The ball starts at O, and we mark as h this height. At an arbitrary point P we can see that there are 2 forces acting on the ball, F which is responsible for the ball rolling down the slope, and f, which is a friction force in the opposite direction. At point P we can mark the downwards force mg acting on the ball. We can then use some basic rules of parallel lines to note that the angles in triangle PCD are equal to triangle AOB.
Galileo’s times squared law of fall
We have the following equation for the total force acting on the ball at point P:
We also have the following relationship from physics, where m is the mass and a(t) the acceleration:
This therefore gives:
Next we can use trigonometry on triangle PCD to get an equation for F:
and so:
Next we can use another equation from physics which gives us the frictional force on a perfectly spherical, homogenous body rolling down a plane is:
So this gives:
We can then integrate to get velocity (our constant of integration is 0 because the velocity is 0 when t = 0)
and integrate again to get the distance travelled of the ball (again our constant of integration is 0):
When Galileo was conducting his experiments he did not know g, instead he noted that the relationship was of the form;
where c is a constant related to a specific incline. This is a famous result called the times squared law of fall. It shows that the distance travelled is independent of the mass and is instead related to the time of motion squared.
Velocity also independent of the angle of incline
Above we have shown that the distance travelled is independent of the mass – but in the equation it is still dependent on the angle of the incline. We can go further and then show that the velocity of the ball is also independent of the angle of incline, and is only dependent on the height at which the ball starts from.
If we denote as t_b as the time when the ball reaches point A in our triangle we have:
This is equal to the distance from AO, so we can use trigonometry to define:
This can then be rearranged to give:
this is the time taken to travel from O to A. We can the substitute this into the velocity equation we derived earlier to give the velocity at point A. This is:
This shows that the velocity of the ball at point A is only dependent on the height and not the angle of incline or mass. The logical extension of this is that if the angle of incline has no effect on the velocity, that this result would still hold as the angle of incline approaches and then reaches 90 degrees – i.e when the ball is in free fall.
Galileo used a mixture of practical experiments on inclined planes, mathematical calculations and thought experiments to arrive at his truly radical conclusion – the sign of a real genius!
Essential Resources for IB Teachers
If you are a teacher then please also visit my new site. This has been designed specifically for teachers of mathematics at international schools. The content now includes over 2000 pages of pdf content for the entire SL and HL Analysis syllabus and also the SL Applications syllabus. Some of the content includes:
- Original pdf worksheets (with full worked solutions) designed to cover all the syllabus topics. These make great homework sheets or in class worksheets – and are each designed to last between 40 minutes and 1 hour.
- Original Paper 3 investigations (with full worked solutions) to develop investigative techniques and support both the exploration and the Paper 3 examination.
- Over 150 pages of Coursework Guides to introduce students to the essentials behind getting an excellent mark on their exploration coursework.
- A large number of enrichment activities such as treasure hunts, quizzes, investigations, Desmos explorations, Python coding and more – to engage IB learners in the course.
There is also a lot more. I think this could save teachers 200+ hours of preparation time in delivering an IB maths course – so it should be well worth exploring!
Essential Resources for both IB teachers and IB students
1) Exploration Guides and Paper 3 Resources
I’ve put together a 168 page Super Exploration Guide to talk students and teachers through all aspects of producing an excellent coursework submission. Students always make the same mistakes when doing their coursework – get the inside track from an IB moderator! I have also made Paper 3 packs for HL Analysis and also Applications students to help prepare for their Paper 3 exams. The Exploration Guides can be downloaded here and the Paper 3 Questions can be downloaded here.
If you are a teacher then please also visit my new site: intermathematics.com for over 2000+ pdf pages of resources for teaching IB maths!
Complex Numbers as Matrices – Euler’s Identity
Euler’s Identity below is regarded as one of the most beautiful equations in mathematics as it combines five of the most important constants in mathematics:
I’m going to explore whether we can still see this relationship hold when we represent complex numbers as matrices.
Complex Numbers as Matrices
First I’m I’m going to define the following equivalences between the imaginary unit and the real unit and matrices:
The equivalence for 1 as the identity matrix should make sense insofar as in real numbers, 1 is the multiplicative identity. This means that 1 multiplied by any real number gives that number. In matrices, a matrix multiplied by the identity matrix also remains unchanged. The equivalence for the imaginary unit is not as intuitive, but let’s just check that operations with complex numbers still work with this new representation.
In complex numbers we have the following fundamental definition:
Does this still work with our new matrix equivalences?
Yes, we can see that the square of the imaginary unit gives us the negative of the multiplicative identity as required.
More generally we can note that as an extension of our definitions above we have:
Complex number multiplication
Let’s now test whether complex multiplication still works with matrices. I’ll choose to multiply the following 2 complex numbers:
Now let’s see what happens when we do the equivalent matrix multiplication:
We can see we get the same result. We can obviously prove this equivalence more generally (and check that other properties still hold) but for the purposes of this post I want to check whether the equivalence to Euler’s Identity still holds with matrices.
Euler’s Identity with matrices
If we define the imaginary unit and the real unit as the matrices above then the question is whether Euler’s Identity still holds, i.e:
First I can note that:
Next I can note that the Maclaurin expansion for e^(x) is:
Putting these ideas together I get:
This means that:
Next I can use the matrix multiplication to give the following:
Next, I look for a pattern in each of the matrix entries and see that:
Now, to begin with here I simply checked these on Wolfram Alpha – (these sums are closely related to the Macluarin series for cosine and sine).
Therefore we have:
So, this means I can write:
And so this finally gives:
Which is the result I wanted! Therefore we can see that Euler’s Identity still holds when we define complex numbers in terms of matrices. Complex numbers are an incredibly rich area to explore – and some of the most interesting aspects of complex numbers is there ability to “bridge” between different areas of mathematics.
Essential Resources for IB Teachers
If you are a teacher then please also visit my new site. This has been designed specifically for teachers of mathematics at international schools. The content now includes over 2000 pages of pdf content for the entire SL and HL Analysis syllabus and also the SL Applications syllabus. Some of the content includes:
- Original pdf worksheets (with full worked solutions) designed to cover all the syllabus topics. These make great homework sheets or in class worksheets – and are each designed to last between 40 minutes and 1 hour.
- Original Paper 3 investigations (with full worked solutions) to develop investigative techniques and support both the exploration and the Paper 3 examination.
- Over 150 pages of Coursework Guides to introduce students to the essentials behind getting an excellent mark on their exploration coursework.
- A large number of enrichment activities such as treasure hunts, quizzes, investigations, Desmos explorations, Python coding and more – to engage IB learners in the course.
There is also a lot more. I think this could save teachers 200+ hours of preparation time in delivering an IB maths course – so it should be well worth exploring!
Essential Resources for both IB teachers and IB students
1) Exploration Guides and Paper 3 Resources
I’ve put together a 168 page Super Exploration Guide to talk students and teachers through all aspects of producing an excellent coursework submission. Students always make the same mistakes when doing their coursework – get the inside track from an IB moderator! I have also made Paper 3 packs for HL Analysis and also Applications students to help prepare for their Paper 3 exams. The Exploration Guides can be downloaded here and the Paper 3 Questions can be downloaded here.
If you are a teacher then please also visit my new site: intermathematics.com for over 2000+ pdf pages of resources for teaching IB maths!
Time dependent gravity and cosmology!
In our universe we have a gravitational constant – i.e gravity is not dependent on time. If gravity changed with respect to time then the gravitational force exerted by the Sun on Earth would lessen (or increase) over time with all other factors remaining the same.
Interestingly time-dependent gravity was first explored by Dirac and some physicists have tried to incorporate time dependent gravity into cosmological models. As yet we have no proof that gravity is not constant, but let’s imagine a university where it is dependent on time.
Inversely time dependent gravity
The standard models for cosmology use G, where G is the gravitational constant. This fixes the gravitational force as a constant. However if gravity is inversely proportional to time we could have a relationship such as:
Where a is a constant. Let’s look at a very simple model, where we have a piecewise function as below:
This would create the graph at the top of the page. This is one (very simplistic) way of explaining the Big Bang. In the first few moments after t = 0, gravity would be negative and thus repulsive [and close to infinitely strong], which could explain the initial incredible universal expansion before “regular” attractive gravity kicked in (after t = 1). The Gravitational constant has only been measured to 4 significant figures:
G = 6.674 x 10-11m3kg-1s-2.
Therefore if there is a very small variation over time it is possible that we simply haven’t the accuracy to test this yet.
Universal acceleration with a time dependent gravitational force
Warning: This section is going to touch on some seriously complicated maths – not for the faint hearted! We’re going to explore whether having a gravitational force which decreases over time still allows us to have an accelerating expansion of the universe.
We can start with the following equation:
To work through an example:
This would show that when t = 1 the universe had an expansion scale factor of 2. Now, based on current data measured by astronomers we have evidence that the universe is both expanding and accelerating in its expansion. If the universal scale factor is accelerating in expansion that requires that we have:
Modelling our universe
We’re going to need 4 equations to model what happens when gravity is time dependent rather than just a constant.
Equation 1
This equation models a relationship between pressure and density in our model universe. We assume that our universe is homogenous (i.e the same) throughout.
Equation 2
This is one of the Friedmann equations for governing the expansion of space. We will take c =1 [i.e we will choose units such that we are in 1 light year etc]
Equation 3
This is another one of the Friedmann equations for governing the expansion of space. The original equation has P/(c squared) – but we we simplify again by taking c = 1.
Equation 4
This is our time dependent version of gravity.
Finding alpha
We can separate variables to solve equation (3).
Substitution
We can use this result, along with the equations (1) and (4) to substitute into equation (2).
Our result
Now, remember that if the second differential of r is positive then the universal expansion rate is accelerating. If Lamba is negative then we will have the second differential of r positive. However, all our constants G_0, a, B, t, r are greater than 0. Therefore in order for lamda to be negative we need:
What this shows is that even in a universe where gravity is time dependent (and decreasing), we would still be able to have an accelerating universe like we see today. the only factor that determines whether the universal expansion is accelerating is the value of gamma, not our gravity function.
This means that a time dependent gravity function can still gives us a result consistent with our experimental measurements of the universe.
A specific case
Solving the equation for the second differential of r is extremely difficult, so let’s look at a very simple case where we choose some constants to make life as easy as possible:
Substituting these into our equation (2) gives us:
We can then solve this to give:
So, finally we have arrived at our final equation. This would give us the universal expansion scale factor at time t, for a universe in which gravity follows the the equation G(t) = 1/t.
For this universe we can then see that when t = 5 for example, we would have a universal expansion scale factor of 28.5.
So, there we go – very complicated maths, way beyond IB level, so don’t worry if you didn’t follow that. And that’s just a simplified introduction to some of the maths in cosmology! You can read more about time dependent gravity here (also not for the faint hearted!)
Essential Resources for IB Teachers
If you are a teacher then please also visit my new site. This has been designed specifically for teachers of mathematics at international schools. The content now includes over 2000 pages of pdf content for the entire SL and HL Analysis syllabus and also the SL Applications syllabus. Some of the content includes:
- Original pdf worksheets (with full worked solutions) designed to cover all the syllabus topics. These make great homework sheets or in class worksheets – and are each designed to last between 40 minutes and 1 hour.
- Original Paper 3 investigations (with full worked solutions) to develop investigative techniques and support both the exploration and the Paper 3 examination.
- Over 150 pages of Coursework Guides to introduce students to the essentials behind getting an excellent mark on their exploration coursework.
- A large number of enrichment activities such as treasure hunts, quizzes, investigations, Desmos explorations, Python coding and more – to engage IB learners in the course.
There is also a lot more. I think this could save teachers 200+ hours of preparation time in delivering an IB maths course – so it should be well worth exploring!
Essential Resources for both IB teachers and IB students
1) Exploration Guides and Paper 3 Resources
I’ve put together a 168 page Super Exploration Guide to talk students and teachers through all aspects of producing an excellent coursework submission. Students always make the same mistakes when doing their coursework – get the inside track from an IB moderator! I have also made Paper 3 packs for HL Analysis and also Applications students to help prepare for their Paper 3 exams. The Exploration Guides can be downloaded here and the Paper 3 Questions can be downloaded here.
If you are a teacher then please also visit my new site: intermathematics.com for over 2000+ pdf pages of resources for teaching IB maths!
Projectiles IV: Time dependent gravity!
This carries on our exploration of projectile motion – this time we will explore what happens if gravity is not fixed, but is instead a function of time. (This idea was suggested by and worked through by fellow IB teachers Daniel Hwang and Ferenc Beleznay). In our universe we have a gravitational constant – i.e gravity is not dependent on time. If gravity changed with respect to time then the gravitational force exerted by the Sun on Earth would lessen (or increase) over time with all other factors remaining the same.
Interestingly time-dependent gravity was first explored by Dirac and some physicists have tried to incorporate time dependent gravity into cosmological models. As yet we have no proof that gravity is not constant, but let’s imagine a university where it is dependent on time.
Projectile motion when gravity is time dependent
We can start off with the standard parametric equations for projectile motion. Here v is the initial velocity, theta is the angle of launch, t can be a time parameter and g is the gravitational constant (9.81 on Earth). We can see that the value for the vertical acceleration is the negative of the gravitational constant. So the question to explore is, what if the gravitational constant was time dependent? Another way to think about this is that gravity varies with respect to time.
Linear relationship
If we have the simplest time dependent relationship we can say that:
where a is a constant. If a is greater than 0 then gravity linearly increases as time increases, if a is less than 0 than gravity linearly decreases as time increases. For matters of slight convenience I’ll define gravity (or the vertical acceleration) as -3at. The following can then be arrived at by integration:
This will produce the following graph when we fix v = 10, a = 2 and vary theta:
Now we can use the same method as in our Projectile Motion Investigation II to explore whether these maximum points lie in a curve. (You might wish to read that post first for a step by step approach to the method).
therefore we can substitute back into our original parametric equations for x and y to get:
We can plot this with theta as a parameter. If we fix v = 4 and a =2 we get the following graph:
Compare this to the graph from Projectile Motion Investigation II, where we did this with gravity constant (and with v fixed as 10):
The Projectile Motion Investigation II formed a perfect ellipse, but this time it’s more of a kind of egg shaped elliptical curve – with a flat base. But it’s interesting to see that even with time dependent gravity we still have a similar relationship to before!
Inverse relationship
Let’s also look at what would happen if gravity was inversely related to time. (This is what has been explored by some physicists).
In this case we get the following results when we launch projectiles (Notice here we had to use the integration by parts trick to integrate ln(t)). As the velocity function doesn’t exist when t = 0, we can define v and theta in this case as the velocity and theta value when t = 1.
Now we use the same trick as earlier to find when the gradient is 0:
Substituting this back into the parametric equations gives:
The ratio v/a will therefore have the greatest effect on the maximum points.
v/a ratio negative and close to zero:
v = 40, a = -2000, v/a = -0.02
This gives us close to a circle, radius v, centred at (0,a).
v = 1, a = -10, v/a = -0.1
Here we can also see that the boundary condition for the maximum horizontal distance thrown is given by x = v(e).
v/a ratio negative and large:
v = 40, a = -2, v/a = -20.
We can see that we get an egg shape back – but this time with a flatter bulge at the top and the point at the bottom. Also notice how quickly the scale of the shape has increased.
v/a ratio n/a (i.e a = 0)
Here there is no gravitational force, and so projectiles travel in linear motion – with no maximum.
Envelope of projectiles for the inverse relationship
This is just included for completeness, don’t worry if you don’t follow the maths behind this bit!
Therefore when we plot the parametric equations for x and y in terms of theta we get the envelope of projectile motion when we are in a universe where gravity varies inversely to time. The following graph is generated when we take v = 300 and a = -10. The red line is the envelope of projectiles.
A generalized power relationship
Lastly, let’s look at what happens when we have a general power relationship i.e gravity is related to (a)tn. Again for matters of slight convenience I’ll look at the similar relationship -0.5(n+1)(n+2)atn.
This gives (following the same method as above:
As we vary n we will find the plot of the maximum points. Let’s take the velocity as 4 and a as 2. Then we get the following:
When n = 0:
When n = 1:
When n =2:
When n = 10:
We can see the general elliptical shape remains at the top, but we have a flattening at the bottom of the curve.
When n approaches infinity:
We get this beautiful result when we let n tend towards infinity – now we will have all the maximum points bounded on a circle (with the radius the same as the value chosen as the initial velocity. In the graph above we have a radius of 4 as the initial velocity is 4. Notice too we have projectiles traveling in straight lines – and then seemingly “bouncing” off the boundary!
If we want to understand this, there is only going to be a very short window (t less than 1) when the particle can upwards – when t is between 0 and 1 the effect of gravity is effectively 0 and so the particle would travel in a straight line (i.e if the initial velocity is 5 m/s it will travel 5 meters. Then as soon as t = 1, the gravity becomes crushingly heavy and the particle falls effectively vertically down.
Essential Resources for IB Teachers
If you are a teacher then please also visit my new site. This has been designed specifically for teachers of mathematics at international schools. The content now includes over 2000 pages of pdf content for the entire SL and HL Analysis syllabus and also the SL Applications syllabus. Some of the content includes:
- Original pdf worksheets (with full worked solutions) designed to cover all the syllabus topics. These make great homework sheets or in class worksheets – and are each designed to last between 40 minutes and 1 hour.
- Original Paper 3 investigations (with full worked solutions) to develop investigative techniques and support both the exploration and the Paper 3 examination.
- Over 150 pages of Coursework Guides to introduce students to the essentials behind getting an excellent mark on their exploration coursework.
- A large number of enrichment activities such as treasure hunts, quizzes, investigations, Desmos explorations, Python coding and more – to engage IB learners in the course.
There is also a lot more. I think this could save teachers 200+ hours of preparation time in delivering an IB maths course – so it should be well worth exploring!
Essential Resources for both IB teachers and IB students
1) Exploration Guides and Paper 3 Resources
I’ve put together a 168 page Super Exploration Guide to talk students and teachers through all aspects of producing an excellent coursework submission. Students always make the same mistakes when doing their coursework – get the inside track from an IB moderator! I have also made Paper 3 packs for HL Analysis and also Applications students to help prepare for their Paper 3 exams. The Exploration Guides can be downloaded here and the Paper 3 Questions can be downloaded here.
If you are a teacher then please also visit my new site: intermathematics.com for over 2000+ pdf pages of resources for teaching IB maths!
Projectile Motion III: Varying gravity
We can also do some interesting things with projectile motion if we vary the gravitational pull when we look at projectile motion. The following graphs are all plotted in parametric form.
Here t is the parameter, v is the initial velocity which we will keep constant, theta is the angle of launch which we will vary, and g is the gravitational constant which on Earth we will take as 9.81 m/s2.
Earth
Say we take a projectile and launch it with a velocity of 10 m/s. When we vary the angle of launch we get the folowing graphs:
On the y axis we have the vertical height, and on the x axis the horizontal distance. Therefore we can see that the maximum height that we achieve is around 5m and the maximum horizontal distance is around 10m.
Other planets and universal objects
We have the following values for the gravitational pull of various objects:
Enceladus (Moon of Saturn): 0.111 m/s2, The Moon: 1.62 m/s2, Jupiter: 24.8 m/s2, The Sun: 274 m/s2, White dwarf black hole surface gravity: 7×1012m/s2.
So for each one let’s see what would happen if we launched a projectile with a velocity of 10 m/s. Note that the mass of the projectile is not relevant (though it would require more force to achieve the required velocity).
Enceladus:
The Moon:
Jupiter:
The Sun:
Black hole surface gravity:
This causes some issues graphically! I’ll use the equations derived in the last post to find the coordinates of the maximum point for a given launch angle theta:
Here we have v = 10 and g = 7×1012m/s2. For example if we take our launch angle (theta) as 45 degrees this will give the coordinates of the maximum point at:
(7.14×10-12, 3.57×10-12).
Summary:
We can see how dramatically life would be on each surface! Whilst on Earth you may be able to throw to a height of around 5m with a launch velocity of 10 m/s., Enceladus would see you achieve an incredible 450m. If you were on the surface of the Sun then probably the least of your worries would be how hight to throw an object, nevertheless you’d be struggling to throw it 20cm high. And as for the gravity at the surface of a black hole you wouldn’t get anywhere close to throwing it a nanometer high (1 billionth of a meter).
Essential Resources for IB Teachers
If you are a teacher then please also visit my new site. This has been designed specifically for teachers of mathematics at international schools. The content now includes over 2000 pages of pdf content for the entire SL and HL Analysis syllabus and also the SL Applications syllabus. Some of the content includes:
- Original pdf worksheets (with full worked solutions) designed to cover all the syllabus topics. These make great homework sheets or in class worksheets – and are each designed to last between 40 minutes and 1 hour.
- Original Paper 3 investigations (with full worked solutions) to develop investigative techniques and support both the exploration and the Paper 3 examination.
- Over 150 pages of Coursework Guides to introduce students to the essentials behind getting an excellent mark on their exploration coursework.
- A large number of enrichment activities such as treasure hunts, quizzes, investigations, Desmos explorations, Python coding and more – to engage IB learners in the course.
There is also a lot more. I think this could save teachers 200+ hours of preparation time in delivering an IB maths course – so it should be well worth exploring!
Essential Resources for both IB teachers and IB students
1) Exploration Guides and Paper 3 Resources
I’ve put together a 168 page Super Exploration Guide to talk students and teachers through all aspects of producing an excellent coursework submission. Students always make the same mistakes when doing their coursework – get the inside track from an IB moderator! I have also made Paper 3 packs for HL Analysis and also Applications students to help prepare for their Paper 3 exams. The Exploration Guides can be downloaded here and the Paper 3 Questions can be downloaded here.
Projectile Motion Investigation II
If you are a teacher then please also visit my new site: intermathematics.com for over 2000+ pdf pages of resources for teaching IB maths!
Another example for investigating projectile motion has been provided by fellow IB teacher Ferenc Beleznay. Here we fix the velocity and then vary the angle, then to plot the maximum points of the parabolas. He has created a Geogebra app to show this (shown above). The locus of these maximum points then form an ellipse.
We can see that the maximum points of the projectiles all go through the dotted elliptical line. So let’s see if we can derive this equation.
Let’s start with the equations for projectile motion, usually given in parametric form:
Here v is the initial velocity which we will keep constant, theta is the angle of launch which we will vary, and g is the gravitational constant which we will take as 9.81.
We can plot these curves parametrically, and for each given value of theta (the angle of launch) we will create a projectile motion graph. If we plot lots of these graphs for different thetas together we get something like this:
We now want to see if the maximum points are in any sort of pattern. In order to find the maximum point we want to find when the gradient of dy/dx is 0. It’s going to be easier to keep things in parametric form, and use partial differentiation. We have:
Therefore we find the partial differentiation of both x and y with respect to t. (This simply means we can pretend theta is a constant).
We can then say that:
We then find when this has a gradient of 0:
We can then substitute this value of t back into the original parametric equations for x:
and also for y:
We now have the parametric equations in terms of theta for the locus of points of the maximum points. For example, with g= 9.81 and v =1 we have the following parametric equations:
This generates an ellipse (dotted line), which shows the maximum points generated by the parametric equations below (as we vary theta):
And here is the graph:
We can vary the velocity to create a new ellipse. For example the ellipse generated when v =4 creates the following graph:
So, there we go, we have shown that different ellipses will be created by different velocities. If you feel like a challenge, see if you can algebraically manipulate the parametric equations for the ellipse into the Cartesian form!
Essential Resources for IB Teachers
If you are a teacher then please also visit my new site. This has been designed specifically for teachers of mathematics at international schools. The content now includes over 2000 pages of pdf content for the entire SL and HL Analysis syllabus and also the SL Applications syllabus. Some of the content includes:
- Original pdf worksheets (with full worked solutions) designed to cover all the syllabus topics. These make great homework sheets or in class worksheets – and are each designed to last between 40 minutes and 1 hour.
- Original Paper 3 investigations (with full worked solutions) to develop investigative techniques and support both the exploration and the Paper 3 examination.
- Over 150 pages of Coursework Guides to introduce students to the essentials behind getting an excellent mark on their exploration coursework.
- A large number of enrichment activities such as treasure hunts, quizzes, investigations, Desmos explorations, Python coding and more – to engage IB learners in the course.
There is also a lot more. I think this could save teachers 200+ hours of preparation time in delivering an IB maths course – so it should be well worth exploring!
Essential Resources for both IB teachers and IB students
1) Exploration Guides and Paper 3 Resources
I’ve put together a 168 page Super Exploration Guide to talk students and teachers through all aspects of producing an excellent coursework submission. Students always make the same mistakes when doing their coursework – get the inside track from an IB moderator! I have also made Paper 3 packs for HL Analysis and also Applications students to help prepare for their Paper 3 exams. The Exploration Guides can be downloaded here and the Paper 3 Questions can be downloaded here.
If you are a teacher then please also visit my new site: intermathematics.com for over 2000+ pdf pages of resources for teaching IB maths!
Envelope of projectile motion
For any given launch angle and for a fixed initial velocity we will get projectile motion. In the graph above I have changed the launch angle to generate different quadratics. The black dotted line is then called the envelope of all these lines, and is the boundary line formed when I plot quadratics for every possible angle between 0 and pi.
Finding the equation of an envelope for projectile motion
Let’s start with the equations for projectile motion, usually given in parametric form:
Here v is the initial velocity which we will keep constant, theta is the angle of launch which we will vary, and g is the gravitational constant which we will take as 9.81.
First let’s rearrange these equations to eliminate the parameter t.
Next, we use the fact that the envelope of a curve is given by the points which satisfy the following 2 equations:
F(x,y,theta)=0 simply means we have rearranged an equation so that we have 3 variables on one side and have made this equal to 0. The second of these equations means the partial derivative of F with respect to theta. This means that we differentiate as usual with regards to theta, but treat x and y like constants.
Therefore we can rearrange our equation for y to give:
and in order to help find the partial differential of F we can write:
We can then rearrange this to get x in terms of theta:
We can then substitute this into the equation for F(x,y,theta)=0 to eliminate theta:
We then have the difficulty of simplifying the second denominator, but luckily we have a trig equation to help:
Therefore we can simplify as follows:
and so:
And we have our equation for the envelope of projectile motion! As we can see it is itself a quadratic equation. Let’s look at some of the envelopes it will create. For example, if I launch a projectile with a velocity of 1, and taking g = 9.81, I get the following equation:
This is the envelope of projectile motion when I take the following projectiles in parametric form and vary theta from 0 to pi:
This gives the following graph:
If I was to take an initial velocity of 2 then I would have the following:
And an initial velocity of 4 would generate the following graph:
So, there we have it, we can now create the equation of the envelope of curves created by projectile motion for any given initial velocity!
Other ideas for projectile motion
There are lots of other things we can investigate with projectile motion. One example provided by fellow IB teacher Ferenc Beleznay is to fix the velocity and then vary the angle, then to plot the maximum points of the parabolas. He has created a Geogebra app to show this:
You can then find that the maximum points of the parabolas lie on an ellipse (as shown below).
See if you can find the equation of this ellipse!
Essential Resources for IB Teachers
If you are a teacher then please also visit my new site. This has been designed specifically for teachers of mathematics at international schools. The content now includes over 2000 pages of pdf content for the entire SL and HL Analysis syllabus and also the SL Applications syllabus. Some of the content includes:
- Original pdf worksheets (with full worked solutions) designed to cover all the syllabus topics. These make great homework sheets or in class worksheets – and are each designed to last between 40 minutes and 1 hour.
- Original Paper 3 investigations (with full worked solutions) to develop investigative techniques and support both the exploration and the Paper 3 examination.
- Over 150 pages of Coursework Guides to introduce students to the essentials behind getting an excellent mark on their exploration coursework.
- A large number of enrichment activities such as treasure hunts, quizzes, investigations, Desmos explorations, Python coding and more – to engage IB learners in the course.
There is also a lot more. I think this could save teachers 200+ hours of preparation time in delivering an IB maths course – so it should be well worth exploring!
Essential Resources for both IB teachers and IB students
1) Exploration Guides and Paper 3 Resources
I’ve put together a 168 page Super Exploration Guide to talk students and teachers through all aspects of producing an excellent coursework submission. Students always make the same mistakes when doing their coursework – get the inside track from an IB moderator! I have also made Paper 3 packs for HL Analysis and also Applications students to help prepare for their Paper 3 exams. The Exploration Guides can be downloaded here and the Paper 3 Questions can be downloaded here.
If you are a teacher then please also visit my new site: intermathematics.com for over 2000+ pdf pages of resources for teaching IB maths!
Rational Approximations to Irrational Numbers
This year two mathematicians (James Maynard and Dimitris Koukoulopoulos) managed to prove a long-standing Number Theory problem called the Duffin Schaeffer Conjecture. The problem is concerned with the ability to obtain rational approximations to irrational numbers. For example, a rational approximation to pi is 22/7. This gives 3.142857 and therefore approximates pi to 2 decimal places. You can find ever more accurate rational approximations and the conjecture looks at how efficiently we can form these approximation, and to within what error bound.
Finding Rational Approximations for pi
The general form of the inequality I want to solve is as follows:
Here alpha is an irrational number, p/q is the rational approximation, and f(q)/q can be thought of as the error bound that I need to keep my approximation within.
If I take f(q) = 1/q then I will get the following error bound:
So, the question is, can I find some values of q (where p and q are integers) such that the error bound is less than 1/(q squared)?
Let’s see if we can solve this for when our irrational number is pi, and when we choose q = 6.
We can see that this returns a rational approximation, 19/6 which only 0.02507… away from pi. This is indeed a smaller error than 1/36. We won’t be able to find such solutions to our inequality for every value of q that we choose, but we will be able to find an infinite number of solutions, each getting progressively better at approximating pi.
The General Case (Duffin Schaeffer Conjecture)
The general case of this problem states that there will be infinite solutions to the inequality for any given irrational number alpha if and only if the following condition holds:
For:
We will have infinitely many solutions (with p and q as integers in their lowest terms) if and only if:
Here the new symbol represents the Euler totient. You can read about this at the link if you’re interested, but for the purposes of the post we can transform into something else shortly!
Does f(q) = 1/q provide infinite solutions?
When f(q) = 1/q we have:
Therefore we need to investigate the following sum to infinity:
Now we can make use of an equivalence, which shows that:
Where the new symbol on the right is the Zeta function. The Zeta function is defined as:
So, in our case we have s = 2. This gives:
But we know the limit of both the top and the bottom sum to infinity. The top limit is called the Harmonic series, and diverges to infinity. Therefore:
Whereas the bottom limit is a p-series with p=2, this is known to converge. In fact we have:
Therefore because we have a divergent series divided by a convergent one, we will have the following result:
This shows that our error bound 1/(q squared) will be satisfied by infinitely many values of q for any given irrational number.
Does f(q) = 1/(q squared) provide infinite solutions?
With f(q) = 1/(q squared) we follow the same method to get:
But this time we have:
Therefore we have a convergent series divided by a convergent series which means:
So we can conclude that f(q) = 1/(q squared) which generated an error bound of 1/(q cubed) was too ambitious as an error bound – i.e there will not be infinite solutions in p and q for a given irrational number. There may be solutions out there but they will be rare.
Understanding mathematicians
You can watch the Numberphile video where James Maynard talks through the background of his investigation and also get an idea what a mathematician feels like when they solve a problem like this!
Essential Resources for IB Teachers
If you are a teacher then please also visit my new site. This has been designed specifically for teachers of mathematics at international schools. The content now includes over 2000 pages of pdf content for the entire SL and HL Analysis syllabus and also the SL Applications syllabus. Some of the content includes:
- Original pdf worksheets (with full worked solutions) designed to cover all the syllabus topics. These make great homework sheets or in class worksheets – and are each designed to last between 40 minutes and 1 hour.
- Original Paper 3 investigations (with full worked solutions) to develop investigative techniques and support both the exploration and the Paper 3 examination.
- Over 150 pages of Coursework Guides to introduce students to the essentials behind getting an excellent mark on their exploration coursework.
- A large number of enrichment activities such as treasure hunts, quizzes, investigations, Desmos explorations, Python coding and more – to engage IB learners in the course.
There is also a lot more. I think this could save teachers 200+ hours of preparation time in delivering an IB maths course – so it should be well worth exploring!
Essential Resources for both IB teachers and IB students
1) Exploration Guides and Paper 3 Resources
I’ve put together a 168 page Super Exploration Guide to talk students and teachers through all aspects of producing an excellent coursework submission. Students always make the same mistakes when doing their coursework – get the inside track from an IB moderator! I have also made Paper 3 packs for HL Analysis and also Applications students to help prepare for their Paper 3 exams. The Exploration Guides can be downloaded here and the Paper 3 Questions can be downloaded here.
If you are a teacher then please also visit my new site: intermathematics.com for over 2000+ pdf pages of resources for teaching IB maths!
Soap Bubbles and Catenoids
Soap bubbles form such that they create a shape with the minimum surface area for the given constraints. For a fixed volume the minimum surface area is a sphere, which is why soap bubbles will form spheres where possible. We can also investigate what happens when a soap film is formed between 2 parallel circular lines like in the picture below: [Credit Wikimedia Commons, Blinking spirit]
In this case the shape formed is a catenoid – which provides the minimum surface area (for a fixed volume) for a 3D shape connecting the two circles. The catenoid can be defined in terms of parametric equations:
Where cosh() is the hyperbolic cosine function which can be defined as:
For our parametric equation, t and u are parameters which we vary, and c is a constant that we can change to create different catenoids. We can use Geogebra to plot different catenoids. Below is the code which will plot parametric curves when c =2 and t varies between -20pi and 20 pi.
We then need to create a slider for u, and turn on the trace button – and for every given value of u (between 0 and 2 pi) it will plot a curve. When we trace through all the values of u it will create a 3D shape – our catenoid.
Individual curve (catenary)
Catenoid when c = 0.1
Catenoid when c = 0.5
Catenoid when c = 1
Catenoid when c = 2
Wormholes
For those of you who know your science fiction, the catenoids above may look similar to a wormhole. That’s because the catenoid is a solution to the hypothesized mathematics of wormholes. These can be thought of as a “bridge” either through curved space-time to another part of the universe (potentially therefore allowing for faster than light travel) or a bridge connecting 2 distinct universes.
Above is the Morris-Thorne bridge wormhole [Credit The Image of a Wormhole].
Further exploration:
This is a topic with lots of interesting areas to explore – the individual curves (catenary) look similar to, but are distinct from parabola. These curves appear in bridge building and in many other objects with free hanging cables. Proving that catenoids form shapes with minimum surface areas requires some quite complicated undergraduate maths (variational calculus), but it would be interesting to explore some other features of catenoids or indeed to explore why the sphere is a minimum surface area for a given volume.
If you want to explore further you can generate your own Catenoids with the Geogebra animation I’ve made here.
Essential Resources for IB Teachers
If you are a teacher then please also visit my new site. This has been designed specifically for teachers of mathematics at international schools. The content now includes over 2000 pages of pdf content for the entire SL and HL Analysis syllabus and also the SL Applications syllabus. Some of the content includes:
- Original pdf worksheets (with full worked solutions) designed to cover all the syllabus topics. These make great homework sheets or in class worksheets – and are each designed to last between 40 minutes and 1 hour.
- Original Paper 3 investigations (with full worked solutions) to develop investigative techniques and support both the exploration and the Paper 3 examination.
- Over 150 pages of Coursework Guides to introduce students to the essentials behind getting an excellent mark on their exploration coursework.
- A large number of enrichment activities such as treasure hunts, quizzes, investigations, Desmos explorations, Python coding and more – to engage IB learners in the course.
There is also a lot more. I think this could save teachers 200+ hours of preparation time in delivering an IB maths course – so it should be well worth exploring!
Essential Resources for both IB teachers and IB students
1) Exploration Guides and Paper 3 Resources
I’ve put together a 168 page Super Exploration Guide to talk students and teachers through all aspects of producing an excellent coursework submission. Students always make the same mistakes when doing their coursework – get the inside track from an IB moderator! I have also made Paper 3 packs for HL Analysis and also Applications students to help prepare for their Paper 3 exams. The Exploration Guides can be downloaded here and the Paper 3 Questions can be downloaded here.
IB Maths Resources from Intermathematics 
