Activities from the Joint Mathematics Meeting 2005

Atlanta, Georgia
January 2005

The Sketchpad User Group had its first meeting of 2005 at the Joint Mathematics Meetings of the American Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Association of America in Atlanta. This page collects the activities and sketches that several participants shared with their colleagues at the User Group meeting. You can download these documents individually, or as a complete collection in a .zip archive or a .sit archive. You are free to use these materials for your personal exploration and for use with your own classes, and to duplicate them for those purposes.

These sketches require Sketchpad 4.0 or later. Many of these documents contain multiple pages. If you have difficulty downloading these sketches individually by clicking on them, consider downloading the entire collection, or right-click (Windows) or Ctrl+click (Mac) their links and choose Download Link To Disk or its equivalent. For more information, read about configuring your Web browser.

Making the Mathematics Visible: Deeper Understanding Through Dynamic Geometry

Presenter: Sr. Barbara Reynolds, Cardinal Stritch University, and Bill Fenton, Bellarmine University Presentation

Description: Making mathematical concepts visible can stretch our mathematical intuition, and lead us to think about these ideas in deeper ways. Using the power of The Geometer's Sketchpad, we will explore trigonometry, properties of functions, and some interesting theorems in circle geometry. This presentation will demonstrate the use of Sketchpad, and show how this technology can be used in both teaching and research to explore substantive ideas in mathematics.

Presentation Materials: sketch

Geometry of Antiquity

Presenter: James Parks, SUNY Potsdam

Presentation Description: Selections from the works of Archimedes, Nicomedes, and Hippias will be presented using models made on The Geometer's Sketchpad.

Presentation Materials: handout, Archimedes sketch, Nicomedes sketch, Hippias sketch, Archimedes Trisection sketch

Shape of the Universe Explorations in Sketchpad: Euclidean and Non-Euclidean Geometry

Presenter: Sarah J. Greenwald, Appalachian State University

Presentation Description: A segment on the geometry of the earth and universe stretches the imagination while developing visualization skills and highlights real-world applications of geometry and connections to art, philosophy, physics, astronomy and geography. This segment can be aimed at students with no math background, at graduate students in geometry and topology, or at any level student in between. We will explore a series of Sketchpad activities on Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry and discuss how they can be incorporated into a Shape of the Universe segment. Mathematics of the Cosmos is the 2005 Mathematics Awareness Month theme.

Presentation Materials: sketch, handout

Geometry as Perception: 4D

Presenter: Steve Sigur, The Paideia School

Presentation Description: This talk will present the work of students at The Paideia School attempting to understand four-dimensional objects using Sketchpad.

Presentation Materials:
Handout: ReadMe
Sketches: HyperCube, HyperCube Explanation, 4D, Face Dual, Face Dual HyberCube