This project is designed to help students understand the relationship between the graphs of a function and its first and second derivatives and how to accurately approximate derivatives from a table of values. Students will develop this understanding in the context of analyzing the velocity and acceleration of animal movement as compared to the velocity and acceleration of different human movements.
Author: Michael Belcher
Lesson 1: Curve Sketching Stations
Lesson 2: The Calculus of Animal Movement
Lesson 3: Using Motion Sensors to Explore Graph Sketching
Lesson 4: Man vs. Beast: Approximating Derivatives using Human and Animal Movement
Download supporting documents: Zip file.