Activity Overview
Students will apply angle-side relationships in triangles to a real-world problem about constructing roof trusses for a building. They will determine what they know about angles in a triangle where only the side lengths are given and then compare it to the actual results of the angle measures when they construct the triangle on a Graphs & Geometry page.
Objectives
• Students will recognize the relationship between the measures of the sides and opposite angles in a triangle—specifically that the largest angle in a triangle is opposite the largest side and the smallest angle is opposite the smallest side.
• Students will see examples of how triangles can be used to solve real-world problems.
Vocabulary
• opposite side
• opposite angle
About the Lesson
• This lesson is a follow-up lesson to the activity Angle-Side Relationships in Triangles.
• This lesson involves students building triangles used to represent roof trusses in order to explore the relationship between the measures of the sides and opposite angles of triangles.