Activity Overview
Given the measures of any three segments, will you always be able to make a triangle?
Objectives
- Students will identify the conditions necessary to build triangles given the lengths of 3 segments.
- Students will use the Triangle Inequality Theorem to determine whether a triangle can be formed when given 3 segments.
Vocabulary
- triangle
- inequality
- segment
- conjecture
About the Lesson
This lesson involves building triangles from three segments. As a result students will:
- Manipulate given segments and make conjectures about the relationships between the lengths of the segments and the possibility of forming a triangle.
- Use randomly generated side measures and manipulate the corresponding segments to determine whether the combination of measures will form a triangle.
- Make and justify a conjecture describing the conditions that must be met to build triangles given segments of different length.