Park City Mathematics Institute
HSTP Summer 2002 Working Group
Physics in the Mathematics Curriculum

Participants selected instances in which physics can be used to illustrate and explain mathematics. They developed brief lessons for use at the high school level which use equipment common to most high school science based on these applications of physics to mathematics.

(password required on the following activities)

Activity Mathematical Content
Magnetic Field Deflection rational functions, inverse square & inverse cubic function, data collection, modeling
Temperature Conversion linear functions, transformations of functions, data collection, modeling
Force Vectors addition of vectors, properties of parallelograms, triangle inequality, proportional reasoning, trigonometry, application of vectors, data collection
Blowgun linear functions, power functions, data collection, modeling
Area of Irregular Shapes concept of area, measurement, percentage error
Singing Tubes step functions, sine functions, data collection, modeling
Bouncing Ball quadratic functions, linear functions, composition of functions, data collection, modeling
Beans in the Classroom measurement, volume, approximation, trigonometry

Working group roster
Daily reports
Project Abstract