“Trigonometry (from Greek trigōnon, “triangle” and metron, “measure”) is a branch of mathematics that studies relationships involving lengths and angles of triangles. The field emerged in the Hellenistic world during the 3rd century BC from applications of geometry to astronomical studies.”
This is the Wikipedia definition of trigonometry and before I learned about this during a unit I didn’t know what this definition meant. Maybe if you are in the same situation that I was or you just can’t understand what trigonometry is then this post on my learning portfolio (blog) might help you and show you how and what I learned.
Well first of all at the beginning of September to start the year we began with trigonometry which at the start of the unit I didn’t really understand at all and it was a pretty hard concept for me to grasp. But after working through some worksheets and asking other people for help I started to understand that we use trigonometry to find the missing side length and angles of a right angle triangle. Here are a couple of the worksheets we did for practice:
Pretty much right off the bat while we were doing these worksheets we learned about our unit project for trigonometry which was based around the inquiry question “how can we use trigonometry to optimize clean energy technologies?” To go more into depth we were using trigonometry to find the optimal angle for a solar panel during a certain time of the year in a certain location.
But before we did the main project we did a lab to help us find the optimal angle for the sun’s rays to hit the solar panel as well as the optimal angle for the solar panel. To do this used a wooden board, wooden blocks (to adjust the angle of the solar panel), a solar panel and a voltmeter (which measures the voltage). We then attached the voltmeter to the solar panel on the wooden board and used wooden blocks to make the optimal angle by staking them. For each block we added on we calculated the angle by measuring the length and height as well as the energy. We did this 8 times and calculated each different measurements, as shown below in me and Mimi’s recorded information:
Our end result concluded the best angle for the solar panel in the class room was 62 degrees using 7 blocks!! We found this our with the voltmeter by increasing the amount of blocks we were using until the voltage decreased, the highest voltage would be the optimal angle.
Once we finished this lab I kinda got a better idea about what the project was about and how I would be going forward with the information I obtained. I started off by finding the latitude and longitude of my house so I could find the optimal angle of my house. After that I then measured the angle of my house using trigonometry to find the angle for the solar panel platform to be flat. How I did this was I found the angle of my roof which is 31 degrees then subtracted this angle from 90 degrees to get the angle I’d need to make a flat platform which is 59 degrees.
To make my solar panel a realistic size I measured the length of my roof which was 24 feet and then decided on a size I wanted for the solar panel that I’d be scaling down from. I then put the measurements both in inches instead of feet and scaled it down. My solar panel ended up being the measurements shown below.
Throughout this project to log all my information i did a write up, this write up shows a lot of the information about what I did to find all the angles such as the ones I explained as well as the angle the sun hits the solar panel. Here is my write up:
After completing the project I then showed my teacher and this is the feedback I got on the rubric:
Overall I am very happy with my final product and I think this project really helped me not only learn trig rations but all helped me relate the math we are doing back into everyday life. I enjoyed this project and I’m excited to start our next unit and project in math.