REMARKS:
The problem described below can be solved in many ways. Variations include the use of polar coordinates instead of rectangular (thus, requiring the use of protractors), or of imposing a coordinate system in such a way that negative numbers are required.
THE ACTIVITY:
The following story is told to the teams of students:
A space shuttle was recently deployed by the government. (Some teams of students will be on
board the shuttle-the so called “shuttle teams.”.) The material used in the construction of
the spacecraft’s heat shield is very special and produced on a secret island off the coast
of North Carolina. (Other teams of students will reside on the island-the “island teams.”)
Remarkably, the only contact between the shuttle and the island is by ordinary telephone!
The island doesn’t even have a PC!
One day, it was noticed by a team of maintenance space walkers that certain polygonal
shaped sections of the shuttle’s heat shield were missing-presumably, they were lost
during the most recent re-entry into space. To make a long story short, because the
shuttle must return to earth soon, patches must be made at the secret island, picked
up by the Navy, passed to a rescue space mission, and delivered to the maintenance
crew of the shuttle as quickly as possible. That’s were the student teams come in.
The instructor hands to the shuttle teams various polygonal shapes-these are hidden from
the island teams-and exclaims, “Here are the exact templates brought into the space
shuttle by the team of maintenance workers. You are to precisely determine the coordinates
of the various vertices using whatever units, method (rectangular or polar) and origin you
wish. Then, you must phone your results to the teams waiting at the secret island.” Those
island teams-of course, the other student groups-armed only with the coordinate measurements
passed on to them by the shuttle teams, will then reconstruct the exact shapes and, of course,
the appropriate patches will be designed and cut, and the shuttle will eventually be saved.
Thus, the goal, needless to say, is for the island teams to deliver polygonal patches which
very closely match the ones originally handed the shuttle teams.
EMPIRICAL VERIFICATION:
Empirical verification is simply a matter of overlaying the original and new polygons.
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