Friday, January 4, 2013

Thank you, John, from Sam


Hi John, 

I've had a chance to catch up on some things. I really enjoy reading about daily life when you were growing up, but I especially liked the story about the boy that couldn't concentrate on his science lesson until you brought in the spider. 

Monday we are starting a unit about translation, rotation, and reflection in a cartesian coordinate plane. 

I am going to start off by talking about the mechanics of hitting a baseball and show them a video of people using a computer to analyze a pitcher throwing a baseball. 

As the lesson progresses I will talk about visiting my Uncle over the break. He works on a flight simulator for Apache helicopters at an Airforce base. Computer graphics use Cartesian coordinates, rotations, and translations all the time. I am hoping that will get the student's interest the way the spider did. I am afraid they won't pay attention long enough to get engaged though. We will see. 

As always thanks for the inspiration.

Sam