Rich "Angry Birds" / Quadratics question.
My cherubs (students) appreciated this question... so I thought I would share...
Cheers.
Views: 1050
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by Kelly Kroft on -
Nice Arthur! I transformed my "cannon" activity into an Angry Birds theme earlier this school year! I was watching on of my students playing it after school and quick ran to the copier! It worked very well with quadratics.
-
Permalink Reply by Wendy Warren on -
I love this. My fiance is laughing right now as I post this because he is not a book learner and more of a hands-on person. He seems to be getting more out of me watching the videos too. I can't tell you how many students a day I catch playing Angry Birds.
-
Permalink Reply by Tiffany Ann Scullion on -
The minute I read the title, I knew I had to take a peak. I have always thought that as often as possible we should make what we teach relevant to what are students are doing/interested in. This is a perfect example! Not only that, but the students know which birds they should use in which instance as well as how they should angle the birds in order to get the desired effect. The truth is that I doubt any of them have ever thought of this as being a math concept at all. This is a pleasant way to bring the math to forefront using something they enjoy. If it all works out, maybe they'll get a little better at the game :)
-
Permalink Reply by J.R. Hill on
-
I think this is great. I love this game and know the students do as well. This is a great way to have them think about math in a way that they are using it. I may use this if that is alright! For some of the advanced learners you could even talk about if they pull the slingshot only half way what would the path of the Angry Bird look like in comparison to the full sling shot. Then you could have them compare the different starting spot of the full slingshot to another spot. The one factor that they won't be able to exactly predict would be what happens to all of the buildings, etc. when the bird hits as that seems different every time!
-
Permalink Reply by Arthur Weiss on -
No problem. Enjoy and expand at will. Make sure you share your activity with the group!
I've used screen shot of the game then inserted them into geogebra, then used that program to find equations to the quadratics. You can also do this with any time laps picture you find on the internet. For example, I have a picture of someone jumping a motorcycle really high. Plug it into geogebra and find the equation. Then we estimated some common distance (in our case we used the wheel radius of the motorcycle), then set the scale to that distance, found a new equation, then found vertex and zeros for how high and how long the jump was and converted wheel radius units to feet. Thus answering "how high did he jump?" and "how far did he jump?"
Another A4A member (and a teacher in my school) Kelli Jurek just sent me a great angry bird math link...
Check out
http://sweeneymath.blogspot.com/search/label/Quadratics
for more details and some screen shots for doing this with angry birds...
He also has a pretty awesome catapult activity that we plan on doing this year.
cheers.
Also check out the rough draft of my soon to be released Algebra 1 Ebook that I have on google docs for the time being (I will take it off google docs and move it to zoho.com if google completely gets rid of their equation editor that uses LaTex). There are many great problems and free resources here as well.
-
Permalink Reply by Jason Lucka on
-
I really like the way you've taken what the students are already interested in and turned it into an actual mathematics lesson. I think that too many students just want to play online games such as "Angry Birds." Few people make a career out of playing games, but there is serious money to be made in designing games. The programming and algorithms that go into making games like "Angry Birds" can be very complicated mathematics. I like the way that you have simplified the math involved so that students can grasp the foundation of how quadratics relates to the game. I would be excited to show this question to my students as another connection in our unit on quadratics. Are there other simplified mathematics lessons/activities from current online games that help students grasp the concepts? I know that my students' level of interest would be heightened from integrating their interests, namely online games, into my lesson plans.
-
Permalink Reply by Arthur Weiss on
-
I've always been interested in finding the coefficient of friction for an online game called "give me friction baby"... Awful name for a game, but it is really addicting game. I believe you can ferret out the mathematics/physics models of the game with a little effort... might fit into a lesson with literal equations...
But, no, I havent really done anything else with online games.
-
Permalink Reply by Mitchell Heethuis on -
I have to say I am really excited about this website and contributions from teachers like yourself. As a new teacher it is such a blessing to have access to other teachers' ideas. Keep up the great work.
-
Permalink Reply by Claudia Heinrich on -
this lesson has a pdf file showing 3 quadratic scenarios of launching the birds: a table, a graph and an equation.
It is all ready to print and use, relates quadratics to an application that the students know.
Google chrome is a free download and allows you to play angry birds on the computer. Here is the link:
After you install it do a search for angry birds.
-
Permalink Reply by Tanisha Johnson on
-
I just looked the activity and the additional angry birds link, Awesome. It makes me want to teach high school alegbra. I used to play this game all the time. I never thought about the direct connection to math. My students will be so sad when I tell them that Angry birds is math. Cant wait til tomorrow.I am very impressed with the creativity of you all. I am currently teaching in elementary, so this lesson would not be applicable this year. This activity, however, has insipred me to create an activity based on the games my students are into lately. Okay, this is why I am taking this Algebra class.
-
Permalink Reply by Deann Markva on
-
I really liked the way you used "Angry Birds" to talk about quadratics. I am going to share this with a teacher who is currently working on quadratics. It really ties in to what our students are doing.
-
Permalink Reply by Jane Devota on -
This is awesome. We have focused on the vertical motion model for quadratics, but this would be great compare and contrast.
© 2013 Created by MVU Administrator.
Powered by
