Reflection

In this unit, I gained an immense amount of information about quadratics. However, the part that I enjoyed the most was learning the quadratic formula, and using it to find the x-intercepts, if given the standard form. I enjoyed this part the most because according to me it was the easiest thing I learned, and was accurate, as well as, quick. One thing I disliked about this unit is factoring complex trinomials. I did not like this part because we used the guess and check method, which was time consuming, and difficult to perform. It was not an accurate way, and took a lot of time because we had to guess the answer, intead of using a method to find the answer. To summarize, I enjoyed this unit a lot, and had a great learning experience, gaining a lot useful information.

I would like to share my quadratics mini test that we did in class!

I received a perfect score in the test but the question that I found interesting was question number 7.

The question was...

A soccer ball kicked into the air follows a parabolic path described by the equation

h= -0.2(d-10)^2+20 where "h" is the vertical height in meters, and "d" is the horizontal distance.

(a) What is the maximum height reached? How do you know?

The maximum height is 20 m because it is the optimal value in the equation (k), and it tells us the maximum height at a certain distance.

(b) How far horizontally has the ball travelled when it is at its highest point? How do you know?

The ball has travlled 10 m horizontally because it is the axis of symmetry in the equation, and tells us that the ball has reached its maximum height at that horizontal distance.

h= -0.2(d-10)^2+20
h= -0.2(5-10)^2+20
h= -0.2(-5)^2+20
h= -0.2(25)+20
h= -5+20
h=15 m

This question was interesting since we had to apply our knowledge of quadratics into real life situations such as soccer. This question invloved thinking, and application to real life, which made it interesting, and thoughtful.