Education Technology


Somewhere in the Middle

Activity Overview

Students find out when the slope of a tangent line is parallel to the secant line passing through the endpoints of an interval to help them find the values of c guaranteed to exist by the Mean Value Theorem.

Key Steps

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    Students are introduced to the Mean Value Theorem.

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    Students use the tangent and secant lines to find the value of c for functions that have one or more values for c, or have no value for c.

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    Then students try to use the tangent and secant lines to find the value of c for functions that have no value for c.

    In an extension, students apply the Mean Value Theorem to prove that two horses had the same velocity during a race.