Welcome to General Chat - GAW Community Area
This General Chat area started off as a place for people to talk about things that are off topic, however it has quickly evolved into a community and has become an intergral part of the GAW experience for many of us.
Based on it's evolving needs and plenty of user feedback, we are trying to bring some order and institute some rules. Please make sure you read these rules and participate in the spirit of this community.
Rules for General Chat
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Be respectful to each other. This is of utmost importance, and comments may be removed if deemed not respectful.
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Avoid long drawn out arguments. This should be a place to relax, not to waste your time needlessly.
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Personal anecdotes, puzzles, cute pics/clips - everything welcome
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Please do not spam at the top level. If you have a lot to post each day, try and post them all together in one top level comment
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Try keep things light. If you are bringing in deep stuff, try not to go overboard.
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Things that are clearly on-topic for this board should be posted as a separate post and not here (except if you are new and still getting the feel of this place)
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If you find people violating these rules, deport them rather than start a argument here.
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Feel free to give feedback as these rules are expected to keep evoloving
In short, imagine this thread to be a local community hall where we all gather and chat daily. Please be respectful to others in the same way
Made some substantial progress getting the kiddos to do a Pythagorean proof today. There may be hope for the post-Covid students after all.
Which one did you use?
The one where you are given a square and a "tilted" square inside the big square, whereas you have four right triangles formed inside the big square in addition to the tilted square. I know this sounds a little confusing, but essentially you add the four right triangles and the small square together to get the area of the big square, and then using algebra you set the areas equal to each other, cancel the like terms and that leaves you with a^2 + b^2 = c^2. The coolest thing about this, aside from the confusing description, is that you can see the light bulb coming on when the kids realize that by subtracting like terms, you derive the formula. Hey, a win is a win, and it is cool to see kids "get it." Some don't and some won't, but there are a couple that see the connection, and that alone is worth the trouble of being a teacher these days 🙂
Got it. Thats a fun one. I am glad you are using pictorial proofs. We never learnt any of that stuff growing up. BTW there was a video I watched where there were like 10 different pictorial proofs, each one more interesting than the previous!
I'll tell you what, bubble, the day it is no longer fun, I'm not going to work. There are still kids out there starving for knowledge, and it is an honor to be a part of that process.