Math Photo: (Sine) Waves on the Beach

Published by patrick honner on

While on vacation, I passed some of my time looking for math on the beach, and I saw a sine wave creeping up the shore.

sine wave in nature

I thought I might be looking too hard for something mathematical, thereby seeing things that weren’t really there.  Thankfully, Geogebra is well-equipped to justify my observations.

wave sine wave equation

Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that Geogebra helps enable my obsessions.


patrick honner

Math teacher in Brooklyn, New York

4 Comments

Maria Droujkova · April 12, 2011 at 12:21 pm

This is so beautiful!

Check out what we do in the Math Trek group: http://naturalmath.wikispaces.com/MathTrekResearchTriangle

Maybe we can collaborate somehow?

MrHonner · April 12, 2011 at 6:05 pm

The Math Treks look interesting–essentially a photo-stream-based game for capturing math images? Fun!

    Maria Droujkova · April 13, 2011 at 8:35 am

    We meet once a week with a local math club and go to different locations, with different topics explored there. What people tell me is kids start noticing math ideas everywhere.

MrHonner · April 13, 2011 at 9:48 am

That’s great. I feel like my project has had a similar effect on students–they were definitely seeing the math all around them! I’ll post some of the student work shortly.

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