Math and flight

Your students have a passion for flying objects such as jets, space shuttle, rockets or airplanes? You would like to use this passion to make mathematics more interesting? The "Math Activities for K-12 Teachers" website developed by the California Polytechnic State University in conjunction with the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center is an amazing resource to do that. Math activities are divided by grade including K-4, 5-8 and 9-12. Each lesson plan is based on one or more aircraft.

Lessons are based on the NCTM Standards 2000 (US Curriculum), but could also stir the interest of any student who likes aircrafts. Units used are imperial, so activities might have to be modified for school in countries where the metric system is used. At the elementary level, lessons include concepts such as estimation, shape identification, basic graphing, subtraction and symmetry. At the intermediate level, lessons include concepts such as angle measurements, area and volume, converting units, Pythagorean theorem, rational numbers and graphing. At the senior level, concepts include logarithms, parabolic paths, relationship and Pythagorean theorem.