What can Trigonometry be used for in the world around us? That question is often used when talking about why we learn trigonometry, and it’s a good one. There are not many triangles in nature, but there’s a lot in things like building, design and architecture.

This relates also to clean energy, when people put solar panels on their house, they have to not only calculate the angle of the panel but also of the sun to where they are.

Before we started the project, we did a lab. The lab was about practicing calculating the ideal angle to the sun. In this project we used wooden blocks, dividers, a small solar panel and the lights to conduct an experiment to determine what the correct number of blocks was, and the trigonometric ratio for the triangle that makes. The document attached is the lab paper.

Our project was to combine all of that, by making a model of a house with a solar panel on it, and explain why it’s at the angle it is to the sun and the house. The challenge was to make a model that was to scale of a real house, that it checked out with the scale of the solar panel matching the scale of the house and with that model we had to include a write up.

My house is set here. On the waterfront in Deep Cove. 49.3268° N, 122.9520° W. I include the coordinates because they are influential to the panel. When you put a solar panel on the roof of a house the way that the angle is determined is you take your latitude: in this case 49.3268° N, and -15° in summer, and add +15° In winter.

Thi house is set in summer, so I took away 15°. Below is the triangle that has the measurements of the model.

That model is a scale. The scale is 1:75. The full dimensions would be 24.5ft x 17.18ft x 18.75ft. In the model that I made though, the measurements are the scale size, but the angles stayed the same. 90°, 56°, and 34°. Below is a few pictures of the scale mode that I made.

I also labeled one of the photos to clarify what’s what.

In the photos you can see a bit of a piece of paper. That is a write up, that write up tells the past few paragraphs I was talking about, it is also attached below.

This project was about trigonometry, a beginning and fundamental unit in math 10. It was relatively easy to learn because we did similar topics in grade 8 and grade 9. The scale model but I found fun because that is one of my skills and something I enjoy, design and architecture. Over all good project where we all learned a lot.