overview
In this unit, we focused on learning about quadratic equations and working with and understanding parabolas. We started with desmos.com to use it to correct our work and examine each element. Desmos was a way to breakdown each small part of a quadratic equation and helped us to correct our work by inputting the equation and retrieving a live recreation of the parabola the equation represents.
postcard activity
For the postcard activity, we picked out a parabola that we could see in everyday life and applied our parabolic calculations to it. We could really pick anything we wanted as long as it had some calculable curvature such as the McDonald´s logo of double arches. After we had picked an object with a curve, we applied a graph to it and then fit a parabola to it. I chose to find the parabola of a bell curve on a bar chart. The calculations, visuals, parabola, and question were made to fit a poster of only postcard size like mini posters of all our work for this project.
reflection
Overall, this project was not bad by any measure. The goals were direct and straightforward with extensive repetitive education to back it up. I am glad it ended with a more creative final product as a medium to display our work. I really did struggle with this project because time and time again, I would fail to understand and retain some methods of finding parabolas and their forms. In this project, there was a large amount of memorization and converting things and specific proper placements of things that also had to be committed to memory. I did not do very well when it came to the large amount of memorization. In the end, however, I still managed to pull through and complete my work with high amounts of effort and attempted my best at retaining a high quality standard.