How is maths used in different professions?
Breck students had a maths session delivered by a local builder, he started the session by showing an architect’s drawing of a new house. They looked at the scale, different rooms in the house and what maths was used whilst drawing the plans.
He then explained how he used Pythagoras Theorem daily to create a right-angled triangle. The students worked together, measuring the lengths of wood, 60 and 80 cm and calculating the third length, to make their own wooden right angled-triangle; this could then be used to build a straight wall, roof or even for shelving.
Next they calculated the area and volume of a garage base to find out how much concrete would be required to fill it.
The final activity was a team challenge to find the area of different items in the room. Each team had to use a tape measure to accurately measure the length and width of each item before they could calculate the area.
The maths skills used during the session were as follows:
Addition, subtraction, multiplication, divide, finding the square and square root of a number, estimating angles, Pythagoras theorem, using a calculator, scaling, area, volume and reading a plan.