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Site: Cricket Wickets, Ellipses and Orbits

Two cricket wickets placed firmly as two foci for elliptical orbits, some fun with hoola hoop rings and tops, and a lot of interesting material and fun obtained from the weekly Budh Bazar was utilised to better appreciate solar system orbits and interesting sky events related to these.

Anurag and Pankaj helping students to draw confocal ellipses using cricket wickets.

After drawing an ellipse using the third wicket and a piece of chalk, students paced out the distance to a point on the circumference, from the two foci to feel the basic property of ellipses with their own feet.

Using bangles obtained from the budh bazaar to understand some great circles and also the fact that the Solar System is shaped like a disc, with small angles between the orbits of the planets - it is not like wound up wool - a nice round ball.

When Anurag asks a question, everyone wants to answer :-)

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Page last modified on November 29, 2008, at 11:56 AM EST