April 22nd - 26th

This will be your last blog post of the year! You have almost made it all the way through calculus! Your exam is in two weeks from Wednesday. For this post, I'd like you to reflect on your experiences in calculus this year. What did you learn, what did you like, what was challenging, how are you feeling about the exam now that we have started reviewing everything, etc.?

April 15th - 19th

There will be no required blog post this week because students will be gone on 5th grade camp. In addition to the review we are doing in class, please spend this week studying and preparing for the AP exam on your own!

April 8th - 12th

Did you know that April is math awareness month? Each year the American Mathematical Society selects a theme for math awareness month. This year's theme is "Mathematics of Sustainability." Visit the website www.mathaware.org. How do you see the role of mathematics in a world of increasing sustainability concerns? (How can scientists and mathematicians use math to increase our sustainability for the future when we continue to use up the Earth's natural resources?)

April 1st - 5th

I hope you are all having a great Spring break and that you also have a wonderful Easter! When we come back from break, we will go over the AP free response questions you have been working on over area and volume in the coordinate plane. You are allowed to use your calculator on these problems. This is the first "real" look you've had at AP free response questions. The free response questions are hard to prepare for because it's hard to know what to expect. I also think that they are harder than the multiple choice questions. I'd like to know what your initial feelings are about the free response questions on the AP exam.

P.S. I can guarantee you will have a free response question over area and volume on the AP exam. After going over the packet in class, I expect all of you to get this question correct on the exam!

March 18th - 22nd

This week we are going to finish up chapter 7 and all of the new material you will learn in calculus! Section 3 in chapter 7 introduces a very important subject in calculus: integrals as volume in the coordinate plane. There is always a problem about this on the free response section of the AP exam. We have already learned how to use an integral to find the area between curves in the coordinate plane, in 2-D. Volume is in 3-D, though. How do you think we can find volume in the coordinate plane if the coordinate plane is in 2-D?

Also, watch the video to the right and the first person to respond with the correct answer to the volume problem will get a couple points extra credit. Find the volume of solid when it's rotated around the x-axis. I do not want your answer in decimal form. Leave it in the most simplified fraction form.

March 11th - 15th

Congratulations! You made it to the 4th quarter of calculus and the last chapter of new material! For your post this week, I'm going to give you writer's choice. You can comment about something important that you've learned this year, your favorite or least favorite part about calculus so far, or how you're feeling now that you've made it through 3 quarters of the class, or your feelings about the upcoming AP exam. I will leave it up to you and I'd like to see some dialogue between students. Feel free to comment about or react to what others have posted.

March 4th - March 8th

This is the last week of the 3rd quarter! Remember there will be a quiz over exponential growth and decay on Wednesday. I will also check your binders on Wednesday as well. We are going to start chapter 7 this week, which is our last chapter of new material! The first part of section 7.1 is a review of some things we've already talked about regarding position, velocity, and acceleration. Section 1 is called "Integral as Net Change." In your own words, I'd like you to describe what that phrase means: "an integral as net change." We talked about this when we were learning about area under the curve.