Exploring math with GeoGebra

Materials

Students are hardly thrilled when teachers continually introduce new applications for them to work with, but this is exactly what the Featured Materials [3] collection for GeoGebra provides. The idea is not only to provide a library of applications for teachers, but also to provide input to software authors from teachers and students alike. The collection contains highly educational material, mainly from physics, and GeoGebra also provides aids to visualization (Figure 7).

Figure 7: GeoGebra also shows effects in physics, such as lattice diffraction interference.

Of much greater importance than prefabricated applications, however, is the option to use GeoGebra as a tool for your own work. In particular, analyzing data sets and exporting them as image files during science instruction provides an excellent opportunity for students to participate actively. Exporting the data also allows porting a self-developed application as an HTML file to a website or a Moodle course.

Setting in Motion

The software lets you assign variables with assigned ranges to points. You can activate this feature by selecting a point in Graphics view with the Move tool. The corresponding controller then passes through the region in either one direction or reverses direction at the end. The construct changes accordingly in all associated properties.

Figure 8 shows the tabular results of a case study. A right mouse click creates a series of points in Graphics view from the values for the fields A2 through B8 . Next, in the entry field, you can enter the presumed function for an undetermined parameter. A very good regression will yield the function s(x)=a*x^2 for the value a=4.5 .