Objectives
- Students will investigate and state the relationship between the altitude to the hypotenuse and the two segments of the hypotenuse formed by this altitude.
- Students will write a conditional statement representing this relationship.
Vocabulary
- altitude (height of triangle)
- hypotenuse
- geometric mean
About the Lesson
This lesson involves observing changes in a construction of a right triangle. Students will progress from manipulating objects, describing observations, and inferring relationships, to making deductive arguments to state a theorem. As a result, students will:
- Discover the relationship between the altitude to the hypotenuse and the two segments on the hypotenuse cut by this altitude.
- Discover that the length of the altitude is the geometric mean between the lengths of the two segments forming the hypotenuse.