Find out how angles and symmetry come into play in the game of pool in this video adapted from Annenberg Learner’s Learning Math: Measurement.

This lesson plan was created to introduce Angles and Equations for 7th-grade math.

What starts out as a cascade of well-mixed granular materials sorts itself into alternating layers of salt and sand.

Premade number tents to use clothesline math with angle relationships such as vertical, complementary, supplementary and the angles created with parallel lines and a transversal. Premade number tents for recognizing relationships within triangles and polygons.

This article helps educators answer questions about geometric thinking and the activities that develop it. It outlines the 3 levels of thinking about shape and space and the 5 phases of activities known as the van Hiele model. The tangram puzzle provides a vehicle for describing these phases and the types of thinking students achieve in each one. The article concludes with a suggestion about followup activity.

This Flash game for one or two players gives students practice in estimating the size of angles. A circle and a radius pointing in a random direction are given. The student activates a second sweeping radius, which can move in either direction, and tries to stop it at the specified measure. Three difficulty levels control the range of angle measures. Points are awarded based on closeness of the estimate. The Teachers' Notes page includes suggestions for implementation, discussion questions, ideas for extension and support.

The purpose of this task is to give 4th grade students a problem involving an unknown quantity that has a clear visual representation. Students must understand that the four interior angles of a rectangle are all right angles and that right angles have a measure of 90_ and that angle measure is additive.

The goal of this lesson is to assist students to relate the forces acting upon particular objects and the “unseen” resolution of those forces. The video begins with a story line involving Adam, who helps his father in the garden by disposing of a garbage bag of leaves—the very act that involves resolution of forces. This lesson includes embedded video clips, animations, diagrams and inquiry-based experiments where students are required to work collaboratively and answer thought-provoking questions. The experiments will involve the study of the resolution of forces on objects placed on varying planes or on platforms of different angles, using materials that are easily found. Finally, students are required to discuss and apply what they have learned to determine whether it is easier to push or to pull a luggage bag with wheels. The lesson will take about 50 minutes to complete.

This three-act math task utilizes videos and questioning to help students explore geometry and angles.

The goal of this task is to use geometry study the structure of beehives. Beehives have a tremendous simplicity as they are constructed entirely of small, equally sized walls. In order to as useful as possible for the hive, the goal should be to create the largest possible volume using the least amount of materials. In other words, the ratio of the volume of each cell to its surface area needs to be maximized. This then reduces to maximizing the ratio of the surface area of the cell shape to its perimeter.

This activity allows students to investigate line symmetry and reflections. Using a mirror, students locate the lines of symmetry. in a square and then proceed to find other shapes by reflecting parts of the square. Ideas for implementation, extension and support are included along with a printable worksheet of squares (.doc)

In this activity students apply their knowledge of triangle properties. It asks students to sort three types of triangles based on angle and side comparisons, while ignoring the size and orientation differences. Students can work online with an interactive Flash applet, or on a printed sheet (included). The Teachers' Notes page includes suggestions for implementation, discussion questions, and ideas for extension.

Open Middle tasks provide opportunities for student to approach a mathematical task using different strategies and representations. They can be used as a warm-up/closing activity, as a formative assessment, or to facilitate discourse and discussion and get insite into student thinking and problem solving. These tasks provide a great opportunity for student to engage with the Standards for Mathematical Practice.

The objective of this lesson is to illustrate how a common everyday experience (such as playing pool) can often provide a learning moment. In the example chosen, we use the game of pool to help explain some key concepts of physics. One of these concepts is the conservation of linear momentum since conservation laws play an extremely important role in many aspects of physics. The idea that a certain property of a system is maintained before and after something happens is quite central to many principles in physics and in the pool example, we concentrate on the conservation of linear momentum. The latter half of the video looks at angular momentum and friction, examining why certain objects roll, as opposed to slide. We do this by looking at how striking a ball with a cue stick at different locations produces different effects.

Blast a Buick out of a cannon! Learn about projectile motion by firing various objects. Set the angle, initial speed, and mass. Add air resistance. Make a game out of this simulation by trying to hit a target.

This brief article describes some of the mathematics of Pythagoras and his society. It relates what they believed to be the natural significance of numbers and the well-known Pythagorean Theorem. A link to a printable page is included.

This task is intended to help model a concrete situation with geometry. Placing the seven pennies in a circular pattern is a concrete and fun experiment which leads to a genuine mathematical question: does the physical model with pennies give insight into what happens with seven circles in the plane?

This activity gives students practice drawing straight lines with a ruler and looking for and categorizing shapes, for example, by the number of sides in polygons. The Teachers' Notes page includes suggestions for implementation, discussion questions and ideas for extension.

This activity gives students the opportunity to describe motions along paths involving turns of 45 and 90 degrees. Ideas for implementation, extension and support are included along with a printable sheet of the maps.

In this activity, students investigate the possible sizes and orientations of squares in a 4 by 4 grid. They are to place as many counters as they can on the grid and avoid making the four corners of any square. Solutions require working systematically. Ideas for implementation, extension and support are included along with printable worksheets of grids (.doc)