Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Project Update

For my Math 641 project, I am working on a "translation" of Book III of Euclid's Elements.  As my source for the Elements, I am using Joyce's Elements webpage.  It is obviously in English already, so by translate I mean that I am trying to use more modern terminology for the things described in Book III.  It has been a challenge though, particularly for some of the longer, multi-faceted propositions.  It is difficult to know how to state some of those more clearly, without getting much too wordy (as I'm prone to do).

For visuals to accompany the definitions, and for manipulatives to accompany each proposition, I am using GeoGebra.  I am still a rookie when it comes to GeoGebra, so it is probably taking me longer to develop these things than most, but I have been surprised at how time consuming making these manipulatives has been.  I've been learning a lot about how to set conditions to show objects, and having to think carefully about what conditions I can set in a diagram to emphasize each proposition.  I had originally imagined that I would make an illustrated step-by-step GeoGebra file for the proofs of each proposition as well, but that might be an ongoing task for some time in the future.

To organize and display my work, I am adding an additional page to this blog per Dr. Golden's suggestion.  I had considered using Google Sites, but after looking that over it seemed just as well to lay out the definitions and propositions in the blog, with links to the GeoGebra pages for each manipulative.

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