Classroom Questions

Questions for ‘Cool Jobs: Motion by the numbers’

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The process of building a human-like head in a video game starts with simple shapes, as Ryan Bown shows here. More shapes are added as the modeling process continues. This builds up the resolution, offering more details to entertain video-game players.

Ryan Bown

By Science News Explores

To accompany feature “Cool Jobs: Motion by the numbers”

SCIENCE

Before Reading:

1.  In what jobs do you think knowing about shapes, angles and curves might be important?   

2.  What games or activities do you enjoy that likely rely on geometry or some other forms of math?

           

During Reading:

1.   What is geometry?  

2.   How does Greg Shaw’s job make use of this field of math? 

3.   What kinds of clues does Shaw use to investigate serious car accidents — ones in which people have been injured?  

4.   What pattern has Shaw seen in the crashes he’s studied?  

5.   How does Ryan Bown’s job involve geometry? 

6.   How does this field of math help Bown create the “environment” of a video game such as Erie?  

7.   What is a navigational mesh?  

8.   How does Jessica Deneweth Zendler’s job make use of geometry?

9.   What is a kinesiologist? 

10.  What does the term biomechanics mean?

After Reading:

1.  What are some aspects of your daily life in which math was important (even if you did not need to apply it personally)?

2.  Using what you learned about geometry from this article, think up four examples in which this math can help people discover new or important things about the world?