Created By: Elizabeth Fiedler

Vectors
Overview of Lesson
Working alone, or in pairs, students will explore how magnitude and direction affect vectors.

Common Core State Standards Grade Level Content

N-VM.1 Recognize vector quantities as having both magnitude and direction. Represent vector quantities by directed line segments, and use appropriate symbols for vectors and their magnitudes (e.g., v, |v|, ||v||, v). N-VM.3 Solve problems involving velocity and other quantities that can be represented by vectors.

Common Core State Standards for Mathematical Practice

1. Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them. 2. Reason abstractly and quantitatively.

Prerequisites
Students will need to have background knowledge in graphing. For the applet activity, some knowledge of cars and their speed and direction when moving will also be helpful.

Learning Targets
After an online activity involving vectors and a class discussion, students will be able to identify vectors and use vectors to model and solve problems on a worksheet.

Time Required
This lesson will take one 50 minute class period.

Materials Required

Video clip from Despicable Me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A05n32Bl0aY Computers for each student (or pairs of students) Guided question worksheet for the web applet activity o Applet: http://www.nctm.org/standards/content.aspx?id=26778 Homework worksheet

Instructional Lesson Plan I. Essential Questions

What types of situations in the world around us can vectors model? How are vectors helpful in answering questions and solving problems?

Fiedler

II.

Plan
1. Play introduction video clip and begin with a discussion on magnitude and direction. We know what directions are, what does magnitude mean? (Have someone look it up if necessary.) [m-w.com: great size or extent; the importance, quality, or caliber of something] How could Vector be committing crimes with magnitude and direction? What does that mean? Magnitude how big his crimes are, how many people are affected, what kind of damage is done, etc.; Direction if the crimes are moving around, moving forward (using new up-to-date ideas over historically common ideas), etc. [Answers will vary depending on the students.] So, if, as Vector says, a vector is an arrow with magnitude and direction, what does that mean about the arrow? How does the magnitude and direction change the arrow? We will discover if our answers make sense using a web activity. 2. Explain what the students will be doing with the web activity, hand out the worksheet, and let them play with the applet to work through the worksheet. Students will work by themselves or with a partner to answer the questions on the guided questions worksheet. They will use the applet found using the link at the top of the worksheet. The activity lets them explore how the appearance of a vector is affected by its magnitude and direction. They will also see how a real-world force, like driving a car, can be represented by a vector. 3. Bring the class back together for a discussion of what they noticed/learned about vectors from the activity. Discuss the questions and associated students answers on the worksheet. How do magnitude and direction affect a vector? How can a vector represent a realworld object in motion? 4. The students will put vectors on the coordinate plane and learn notation of vectors. The students will see how to notate a vectors direction and magnitude. They will also see an example of how to write the coordinates for a vector. Finally, there is an application of these techniques to a vector that students draw on a coordinate plane. 5. For the last part of the activity, students will look at vectors as a result of two forces. They will look at a boats movement affected by wind and represented by a given vector. The students will determine how the motor and the wind affect the overall movement and speed of the boat. 6. Hand out homework worksheet to begin and bring back finished tomorrow.

Assessment
The students will attempt to complete a worksheet for homework to be assessed the next day.

Fiedler

Possible Extensions
The captain of a motorboat is trying to go south down a river. If there is a wind blowing directly southwest (45 angle to south), what direction does the captain need to steer his boat in order to go directly south? How would the speed of the wind compare to the speed of the boat? Explain your answers.