One way that I can connect my summer internship experience to my classroom curriculum is in my Honors Pre-Calculus class. Within the class, we study both uninhibited and inhibited growth (exponential and logistic growth). This same concept came up several times during my internship. For instance, within the greenhouses and in the farms of growers, populations of pests arise. These populations and their growths can be studied and modeled mathematically. I will implement a project that will review exponential functions and teach logistic growth functions. Students will study “soybean plants” with aphids on it – modeling the growth, predicting values, and analyzing. They then will study a more realistic model (were the population is inhibited) and compare. The project will end with the students researching and making a suggestion as to how growers would deal with such populations.
