Outdoor learning - Inclinometer for trigonometry.

My Year 10s loved making this during our trigonometry learning.  We then took it outside to estimate the height of trees, the school building, lamposts etc.

They made their inclinometer from a straw, string, sellotape, a small weight and a card version of this template:

Here's one made-up:

It takes one student to look at the top of the object through the straw and one to read the angle made by the string as demonstrated in the first picture.

The only other piece of equipment Year 10 needed was a tape measure and they were off!

Before making any calculations about the height of the object they made diagrams and included any measurements in it:

 

Trigonometry-tastic!

 

Many thanks to http://www.satsig.net/pointing/how-to-make-inclinometer.htm for allowing me to include their template in the blog and on the resources- they have a lot of fantastic maths-in-context information on there - well worth a look round. If you follow the link there's also a picture of someone using one of the inclinometers to correctly angle satellites.

 

 

 

A word document with a template and picture of how it should look are available to download here from TES.