Modeling the Tides
- Contributing Teacher: Geoff Hagopian, College of the Desert, December, 2, 2000
- Suggested Grade Level: This activity is appropriate for precalculus or trigonometry, but could easily be adapted to calculus and beyond.
- Time Required: About a week.
- Materials and Technology Needed: Internet access and pencil/paper.
- Safety Considerations: As always, keep clear of slackers and Dubya backers.
- Teacher Preparation: Carefully read through and perform all the exercises before foisting this on innocent students.
- Objectives and Learning Outcomes: Students will learn how to fit parameters to superimposed sinusoids to model tidal motion..
- Purpose: The purpose of this project is to discover how to sinusoids can be combined to produce a wide variety of curves and to learn how the tides are affected by the sun, the moon, and the geography of Baja California.
- Procedure: See this page.
- Results/Analysis: Some answers are given in the procedure section, others are readily available in the references supplied.
- Teacher Reflections: I love this stuff! Really terrific how it ties in math/physics with earth science in a way that is important and relevant to people everywhere.
- Extensions: Lots of room for expansion here.
- Assessment Suggestions: Many different levels of approach here from basic arithmetic to partial differential equations. All depends on how you ask what questions.
- Standards Addressed: Yeah, I know this is important, but it's late in the game and I need to be done.
- References/Resources: Included throughout..