Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Triangle question - 2nd grade

It's interesting, though, that this thread has already come up with 5, count'em, five, significantly different ways to do the question (ruler and compass construction; purely by eye; use a protractor and measure; use the perpendicular bisector of a side to help guide the eye; manipulate edges). Between them these bring out a lot of important geometry, especially that you can use "equal angles" or "equal sides" in this case (in more advanced geometry, a lot of the art is knowing when to go after angle, when sides, and when you can play them off). At the risk of making everyone hate me, I think this suggests it's quite a good question! ETA with a high ceiling (fully understanding all the methods and their pros and cons) and low floor (gaining a basic understanding of what an equilateral triangle is), as the educationalists say - the only pitfall really is kids being too scared to have a go. ETAagain infinitely better as guided exploration in class than as homework, though!