Law of Cosines

Fred Sandback creates installations that delineate planes and volumes in space. Inspired by his work, our class decided to scale up.

Materials: string, yardsticks, thumb tacks, calculators, tall people

Procedure: Students strung yarn from the ceiling, walls and floor (and everything in between) to form giant triangles. We then measured the length of each side, and used the law of cosines to solve for the triangle’s angles.