IB Maths Resources from Intermathematics
IB Maths Resources: 300 IB Maths Exploration ideas, video tutorials and Exploration Guides
(Photograph: Photograph: WWL-TV, from The Guardian) Teenagers prove Pythagoras using Trigonometry The Guardian recently reported that 2 US teenagers discovered a new proof for Pythagoras using trigonometry. Whilst initial reports claimed incorrectly that this was the first time that Pythagoras had been proved by trigonometry, it is nevertheless an impressive achievement. I will go through... Continue Reading →
Sphere packing problem: Pyramid design Sphere packing problems are a maths problems which have been considered over many centuries - they concern the optimal way of packing spheres so that the wasted space is minimised. You can achieve an average packing density of around 74% when you stack many spheres together, but today I want to... Continue Reading →
https://giphy.com/gifs/KAe4nRWH6PlwGqnJJZ The Tusi couple - A circle rolling inside a circle Numberphile have done a nice video where they discuss some beautiful examples of trigonometry and circular motion and where they present the result shown above: a circle rolling within a circle, with the individual points on the small circle showing linear motion along the... Continue Reading →
Modeling hours of daylight Desmos has a nice student activity (on teacher.desmos.com) modeling the number of hours of daylight in Florida versus Alaska - which both produce a nice sine curve when plotted on a graph. So let's see if this relationship also holds between Phuket and Manchester. First we can find the daylight hours... Continue Reading →
Modelling tides: What is the effect of a full moon? Let's have a look at the effect of the moon on the tides in Phuket. The Phuket tide table above shows the height of the tide (meters) on given days in March, with the hours along the top. So if we choose March 1st (full... Continue Reading →
Circular Motion: Modelling a ferris wheel This is a nice simple example of how the Tracker software can be used to demonstrate the circular motion of a Ferris wheel. This is sometimes asked in IB maths exams - so it's nice to get a visual representation of what is happening. First I took a video... Continue Reading →