Image of the Week: The Geometry that Surrounds Us
February 18, 2024
The Geometry that Surrounds Us
No matter where you live, your world is full of geometric ideas. From the ways buildings are constructed, to streets and telephone poles, there are shapes, lines, and angles intersecting, overlapping, and partitioning space. We focused on this idea back in December by looking at the patterns in sewer covers (one of my favorite places to find patterns in the everyday!) We draw on this everyday bounty in our Off You Go activities, in which we ask students to find concepts in their environment and bring them back to share and discuss with the class. This process helps sharpen students’ ideas about concepts and widen their lens for the many ways these concepts can show up in their worlds.
In this week’s image, we show just one of the endless examples of this: railroad tracks. In this Off You Go activity, designed for students learning about lines, begin by pointing out that this image shows both parallel and intersecting lines. Ask, Where do you see parallel lines? Where do you see intersecting lines? Invite students to analyze and decompose this image. If possible, annotate the picture with your students’ ideas, perhaps color-coding pairs of lines that are parallel and pairs that intersect.
Then, send your students off to find other examples of parallel or intersecting lines in their environment. You might have them collect an example from home that they can bring in, or hunt around your classroom, school, or campus. If you look in your classroom, students might label these examples with a sticky note, photograph them, or sketch them if the line are located in exampled they cannot collect, such as intersecting lines in a window frame.
In the end, collect two groups: examples of parallel lines and examples of intersecting lines. Be sure to ask: How did you know these lines were intersecting? How did you know these lines were parallel? You may uncover some misconceptions along the way. For instance, are two lines that don’t intersect always parallel?
Geometry comes alive when students connect the ideas, language, and patterns that describe space to the physical spaces in which they live and learn. Get geometry off the page with an Off You Go activity!
To multiplicity, cheers!
Jen Munson and the multiplicity lab group