by Fay Shaw, Postdoctoral Scholar
The CEEO is exploring new ways to broaden making to departments outside of engineering. Jumbo’s Maker Studio teamed up with three Calculus 2 professors, Zac Faubion, James Adler and Sarah Bray to construct an innovative extra credit assignment. Students visited the Maker Studio to design artifacts generated by the math they learned in the Calculus 2 course. They engaged with the course material by creating physical representations of mathematical objects. Most students used TinkerCAD to 3D print volumes that were generated by rotating curves or approximations of volumes. One group represented approximations of the Koch snowflake using wood cut in the laser cutter. Here are some example projects from Fall 2015.
a – Volume by rotation using the washer method, 2 different washer thickness.
b – Volume approximation of pyramid (Riemann Sum)
c – Volume approximation of pyramid with different thicknesses.
d – Sierpinski pyramid
e – Riemann sum of a parabola.
f – Volume by rotation of sin function around the y-axis using washer method.
g – Volume by rotation of hyperbolic cosh function about y-axis.
h – Lasercut Koch snowflakes
i – 3D printer Koch snowflake
The activity also helped introduce students to the Maker Studio – they had discussions about how the 3D printer worked and plan to visit the Maker Studio in the future to work on personal projects. We are repeating this activity with the Spring 2016 Calculus 2 classes and look forward to seeing their creative projects!
