Application for Trigonometry

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Making math meaningful and maybe interesting is a challenge. The photo above refers to a real life application for triangles and trigonometry (see photo below) that is found in a news story about Russian jets and a US destroyer. The jet was flying at an altitude of 100 yards and within 200 yards of the destroyer. Topics that could be addressed:

  • Altitude (and perpendicular)
  • Pythogorean Theorem
  • Trigonometry: e.g. find angle of elevation or depression
  • Vectors (include velocities)

A relevant, real life application is a method to make information meaningful. When talking about the altitude of a triangle (the up and down part shown in the photo below) the vocabulary term of altitude becomes more meaningful both in terms of context and with the visual below.

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Here is the agenda I would follow to use this application as an activity.

  1. I would show the video (show on the webpage linked at bottom of handout) and explain what a destroyer and the jets are.
  2. Discuss the situation with Russia (age appropriate discussion)
  3. Show the picture and ask the students to draw a sketch.
  4. Review the sketch and refer to the parts of the triangle in real life terms, e.g. altitude.
  5. Task the students with a problem related to this problem – create your own, e.g. find the angle of elevation or use Pythagorean Theorem to find length of missing side.
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