Math in Secret

For six years of my life, I did gymnastics. I would go almost everyday after school and spend my entire evening at the gym. Gymnastics revolves around shapes, angles, and lines. On every event, whether it was vault, floor, beam, or bars, your body was always supposed to be in a certain shape at a certain angle. For me vault was my best event. Why? It was because after years of perfecting my front hand-spring vault, I knew the secret. It started out with a good run, hurdling, and hitting the spring board with your knees should be in-between a 90 and 145 degree angle, for the maximum spring off the board. Next, you should hit the vault at 45 degree angle to the table, so you will pop off the table and reach your maximum height. Throughout the entire vault, your body should remain in a straight line. If you do all of this correctly, you should have an excellent vault.

Today, in diving, I use angles and shapes in the same way. Dives are done in four different positions. Tucked, meaning your knees are bent and as close as possible to your chest, piked, meaning your body is folded in half, like a 90 degree angle, but your face should be against your knees. Next, there is the straight position, meaning your body remains in a 180 degree line throughout the dive, and free, which is only used if you are doing a dive with a twist in it. Angles are everywhere. From when you hit the end of the board, to when you are in the air, and lastly when you enter the water. Diving combines power with grace, which can be seen in this video on how angles are relevant to diving: diving.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZGSHAmTspM 

Slope

GA2:

Slope, grade, percents, degree of tilt, they are all the same thing. If they are all the same thing than why is it that a 9% grade on a road is quite steep; whereas, as 9% on a test is failing? Slope can simply be found by finding the rise over run of a line. Secondly, the slope of the road, or anything for that matter, can be related to the sine function rather than tangent or cosine functions. The sine function is used to find the grade of the road, because it is still possible to find the slope, even when the horizontal distance id unknown. Take a regular right triangle for example. If you don't know what the base, or horizontal distance is, but you know what the angle of elevation is, you can use the sine function and divide the length of the opposite side (rise) over the length of the hypotenuse(run). This makes sense, because the formula for the sine function is sin= opposite/ adjacent, and the slope of a line is equal to rise/ run.

In everyday life, most people probably wouldn't know how to find the slope of a hill, or what it is for that matter. So how does this apply to everyday life? For people driving along a road, and see a sign that has the percent grade on it, in our case 9 %, they will know for that every 100 feet they travel, they will be 9 feet higher than they were at the last point. 9/100 is the same universally, no matter what the case is,  but 9 % can vary drastically depending on the circumstance, but makes complete sense if you understand the logic behind it.