Turtle Geometry 1.1

9. [D] Which encloses the larger area — poly(5, 5) or poly(6,6)?

Thought process:

The first thing I need to do is remember what a poly is: • Go forward some fixed amount, turn right some fixed amount, and repeat this sequence over and over. This procedure is called poly. (page 26)

Next, what does it mean to poly (5,5) and poly (6,6)? I have no idea what poly(5,5) is supposed to indicate and (unless I’m missing something) there is no example in the book preceding the problem.

So I’m going to move on to another problem

15. [D] Find some local and intrinsic way to describe an ellipse. Write a program that makes the turtle draw ellipses, where the inputs specify the size and eccentricity of the ellipse. [A]

First, I made this sequence:

When clickedPen downMove 1 stepRotate 1 degree

(to make sure the sprite was arcing.)

Then I added “forever” around “move 1 step” and “rotate 1 degree.” I knew it would make a circle, but I wanted to see it before I try to make it more oblong.

To try to make the shape more elliptical, I tried making the number of degrees the sprite turns with each step larger. This still produced a circle only the circles became smaller.

So, I returned the rotation to 1 degree and changed the move __ steps to 2 steps. It still produced a circle. (I feel like I am in fifth grade again when we were piloting an alternative methods math curriculum and had to find other ways to do easy problems, such as long division assignments without using long division. It was a pain in the neck and I guessed and checked all year long. I would have saved so much time if I had been allowed to use the methods I knew. And on top of it, our teachers gave no instruction on how to do these problems in a new way……clearly I have been traumatized by math over and over…

Then I thought: Maybe I have to move first in a circular way and then insert different pattern to make the shape less circular. So I tried this:

But that didn’t work because, as I should have learned from the attempt before this, making the sprite move more steps and rotate the same amount still produces a circle.

Now I’m kind of frustrated, so I went online and tried to find someone’s project in scratch who made an ellipse to see how they did it. I realize this is cheating. Luckily, I found this before finding what I need:

Though I haven’t a clue what is going on in this project, the “circle” doesn’t look completely circular, which reminded me that an ellipse doesn’t have to be an oval, it can just be slightly less circular than normal (Which makes the assignment seem less intimidating).

Now this is just ridiculous. It seems I have some concentric circles, but I don’t know why.I have no idea what happened here, but I do know that adding variables did absolutely nothing.

Maybe I need to think of the ellipse shape differently—as what a quadratic function would look like if I could make the two ends meet instead of extend upwards infinitely.

1 up, two over,

I tried this thinking it would produce a similar image as a quadratic function

But, I got a rectangle instead. I think I am fresh out of ideas.

I feel really limited as to what I can do with scratch and it’s not because of the program, it’s because I can’t translate what I know something needs to look like to the functions of scratch. This class is making high school math seem logical to me. I know that we’re supposed to be learning an alternate way of demonstrating mathematical things and I really do want to see if I can do it by the end of the semester. Or at least improve.