Algebra II is a primarily junior class, and for a month, the juniors went on their LINK internships. Since there were several sophomores, freshmen, and even some seniors, another option was needed. This resulted in an entirely different project called the encyclopedia project. Last year an encyclopedia was started, and it was our job to refine it. We were assigned a topic in Algebra II that we had learned earlier that year, and were told to research it. After research, interviews, and much refining of the previous classes work, we finally presented the encyclopedia at final exhibition.
This was by far one of my favorite projects of the entire year. I have never really connected to math, but this project, I encountered someone who felt that connection and was very enthusiastic about math, Robert Ferrel. This was the man I interviewed for my topic, Quadratic Equations. He spoke to me about his everyday usage of the quadratic equation, even though he was no longer a physicist, and gave me many examples. I chose to create a prezi with my information, and ended up presenting that at final exhibition. I found this project very fascinating, and though I love expressing my project through art, I surprisingly enough am satisfied with the result.
Polynomials and Art
The polynomials project was all about finding and graphing curves, and then transforming them into a drawing. There were optional pictures we could choose from the school, or we could go home and find pictures on our own. The beginning pictures ranged from disney princesses and villains to scenic landscapes and vistas. After the class went through the entire process of confirming the polynomial shape, or reforming the curves to make them polynomials, and transcribing them elsewhere to complete the final drawing, the results ranged from mountains to DNA samples and everything in-between. There was also an added component for the challenge extension that prepared us for the project to follow. This was what you see below, a paper on where polynomials are used in the "real world". We chose different occupations and researched them and their connections to polynomials.
I began with what I thought was a fairly easy picture of bridges and their reflections in the water. This turned out to be more challenging than I thought it would be because the curves that made up the bridges were not polynomials at all. This resulted in quite a process of tweaking the curves to the perfect place where they approximately reflected the bridges, but were also polynomials. Once I was overall satisfied, I created a spider out of the curves existing on my paper. I also did the challenge extension where you researched occupations that use polynomials and wrote a paper on them. I chose to research computer programming, economists, forestry, conservation, and logging workers. This project was challenging to me but I am satisfied with the results.
Linear Equations
For this semester, I am proudest of my linear equations mini project. Throughout my learning career, I have struggled with frustration in math. I work very hard but often my answers are far from correct. Despite these troubles, I still tried the challenge extension on this project. This is one of the reasons I am so proud of this project. I worked hard and persevered through the challenge extension, and despite my troubles, I still ended up creating beautiful work. Since in this project we were drawing pictures and writing the equations for some of them, the challenge extension made this project extremely tedious. The challenge extension required every single line in the project to have an equation so I ended up with almost 3 pages double sided of equations I had to turn in. I have learned that I am strong enough to work through the frustrations and even if the results aren’t correct, I always learn throughout the process.