Car Project - wrap-up

The final day of the car project focused on students building their car models. As it turned out, a couple of groups realized, as they built their design, that they could do better in terms of using less material and having greater volume. Others were still fine tuning their write-ups. I also had to have a few students put more comparison in their write-ups as they had focused on their final design without justifying their decision by explaining other designs they had considered.

I was pleased to see that many of the final designs contained curved surfaces. I know that students had primarily started with rectangular prisms. Seeing the curved surfaces was a clear indication that they had discovered that they could create more volume using less surface area through curved surfaces.


Tuesday is the PSAT test in Colorado. I have asked the class to take the practice PSAT this weekend. We'll go over questions and materials in on Monday.

The day after the PSAT test we'll begin our next unit, Circles. We'll be focusing on how a circle is defined, the equation of circles derived through the distance formula, completing the square, and transformations of circles: translations and dilations.