On 9/23/06, Michel Paul <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I know Kirby has done stuff with ray tracing - but I still have to learn > about that. The > kinds of things you CAN graph with Python are amazing, 3-d and so on, but it > requires > a bit of effort.
My most recent module along these lines used VPython for more interactive plotting. But it was a very primitive beginning (no tic marks!). However, I *do* like keeping an full XYZ apparatus in the picture, even if the Z axis is suppressed (not drawn), meaning students can rotate their Cosine Wave or Parabola, zoom in and out, study it from all angles. I call the Beyond Flatland, and it's a leading wedge between wimpy calculators on the one hand, and real math on the other. http://www.4dsolutions.net/ocn/graphics/cosines.png VPython module used to plot the above Cosine Wave: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/edu-sig/2006-September/007150.html My suggestion: develop a culture of students contributing to a school Library of Code (a local Vaults of Parnassus if you will). There's something cool about finding your best friends older sister's name on some plotting module you're using, knowing she wrote it two years ago. Give kids a sense of contributing to their peers downline in other words. You can do this with TI programs, true, but the TI language is really black boxy from what little I've seen of it, nor general purpose. Basic numeracy is *not* just about number crunching, but about symbol processing more generally. Out here in the Silicon Forest, it's less of a tough sell, to get Python in the schools: http://mathforum.org/kb/thread.jspa?threadID=1451732&tstart=0 Kirby _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
