Education Technology

What's Right about Triangles

Subject Area
Math: Middle Grades Math: Geometry
Level
6-8
Activity Time
45 Minutes
TI Calculator
TI-Nspire™ Apps for iPad®
TI-Nspire™ CX series
TI-Nspire™ CX CAS/CX II CAS
TI-Nspire Version
4.0
Resource Types
Lessons
Format
TNS

What's Right about Triangles

Activity Overview

This lesson involves examining a visual proof of the Pythagorean Theorem and supporting what happens geometrically.

Objectives

  • Students will explore how the area of a parallelogram remains unchanged if the base and height remain fixed while the side length changes.

Vocabulary

  • right triangles
  • hypotenuse and legs of a right triangle
  • Pythagorean Theorem
  • converse of a theorem
  • area and perimeter
  • parallelogram
  • base and height

About the Lesson

This lesson involves examining a visual proof of the Pythagorean Theorem and supporting what happens geometrically.
As a result, students will:

  • Explore the invariability of the areas of parallelograms that keep their base and height fixed but have different side lengths. This understanding will help students support what is happening with the visual proof the Pythagorean Theorem.
  • Examine what kind of triangles have the sum of the squares of their shorter sides equal to the square of their largest side in order to explore the converse of the theorem.

Subject Area
Math: Middle Grades Math: Geometry
Level
6-8
Activity Time
45 Minutes
TI Calculator
TI-Nspire™ Apps for iPad®
TI-Nspire™ CX series
TI-Nspire™ CX CAS/CX II CAS
TI-Nspire Version
4.0
Resource Types
Lessons
Format
TNS
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