Sunday, July 21, 2013

Shapes and sizes of summer

Geometry is everywhere, look at any lake on any given weekend. The body of water is riddled with circular tubes, trapezoid inflatables to pull behind a boat, triangular jetski's, and rectangular pontoons. Naturally these shapes come in a variety of sizes, to accommodate a quantity of people.

A pontoon is a perfect example of a rectangular device. Depending on the people you wish to keep afloat, the size of the pontoon must vary. If you take, for example, a party of 8 people going out onto the lake to enjoy a warm sunny day, the pontoon will naturally have to be bigger than one made for only 4 people.

The beautiful thing about geometry is that we can use this to help us find how big a pontoon needs to be for 8 people. If we take the length of the pontoon times the width of the pontoon, we would then find the approximate area of the boat in which to fit people.

No comments:

Post a Comment