Once again, we had a great trip, and as always, the time slips away and we do not get enough done while we are there!
I talked with the kids about how the "whispering" worked while we were at the U.S. Capitol. Our tour guide went to a specific spot on the floor of the room with all the statues, and asked us to remain where we were, huddled around a different specific spot. She whispered some words, and we could here them perfectly clearly, as though she was talking directly to us in a normal tone. Alas, we ran out of time to sit down and figure this out, so I thought I would post this on our blog. One nice thing about a blog is that it is an ever-changing environment if you so choose it to be.
The two spots on the floor were actually the two foci of an ellipse, one of the four conic sections in mathematics. The ceiling was curved in the shape of an ellipse, allowing the whispering "trick" to work. An ellipse has certain special properties, one of them being that anything emitted at one focus (light, voice, etc.) is reflected back to the other focus.
Anyway, a web site to check this this out is listed below. I taught math for 21 years before I became the tech coordinator at A-P and the conic sections were always of great interest to me. I always greatly enjoyed teaching math; it did not seem like work most of the time!
Anyway, here is a website with this information:
http://www.mathopenref.com/ellipse.html
Thanks for listening, and I will give the kids a quiz on this soon! Thanks, Mr. L
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