Sunday, March 11, 2012

Teaching preCalculus: Gimme Sullivan & Sullivan any day!


I just finished a large unit in my preCalculus for Seniors class. We did the chapter on Conic Sections in the Sullivan & Sullivan text pictured above. We had a lot of fun with topics such as Completing the Square, Standard Form, graphing twisted comics using Polar Mode on the Graphing Calculator and Planet Orbits! This unit really lends itself to doing some nice applications such as parabolic mirrors, whisper galleries, ballistics (we also touched on parametric mode) and orbits about the Sun. Can you spell "aphelion?" What follows is a summary of all the ScreenCasts and SmartNotes I recorded for this unit. Enjoy!








Sample preQuiz Solutions:
https://sage.math.clemson.edu:34567/home/pub/303/









Well, that's all folks!

2 comments:

  1. Thank you!! You are an awesome teacher! Really helped me study for my test

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wow! Thanx, for the kind words. Glad to be of service.

    ReplyDelete