I took Pre-Calculus both to satisfy the Quantitative Literacy portion of SLCC's General Education requirements and as a prerequisite course for Calclulus I, required by the Computer Science and Information Systems degree I am pursuing. Completed during the Summer 2014 semester at Salt Lake Community College's Redwood campus.
Our project was to model the motion of a weight suspended by a spring using tirgonometry and reflect upon its relevance to real-world applications.
Part of the ePortfolio requirements for this course includes submitting this project, which illustrates how the abstract concepts presented by trigonometry have real-world applications - often to a higher degree than is commonly perceived. This specific project involved modeling the motion of a weight suspended by a spring. The project also utilized trigonometric functions to determine the location of the weightm its velocity, and the tension of the spring at any specific moment in time.
I have long been aware of how integral mathematics are in the real world - comes from being raised by my engineer grandfather, I suppose. Everything from using simple algebra to determine how many of a particular item you can afford to buy to calculating dead-load and live-load values when engineering a span such as a bridge or truss. This project simply advanced in its relevance from static calculations (as mentioned earlier) to dynamic ones.
In addition to its integral role in engineering and physics - even as specific as driving 18-wheelers - trigonometry lies at the very core of the 3D graphics, physics, and rendering systems utilized by advanced software applications such as video games. With most video games, the affordances presented by a game world's versimilitude to the real world is paramount for the requisite suspension of disbelief.
Modern video games live or die based upon how consistently they present their environments, and simple trigonometry lies at the heart of making these worlds feel 'real'.