Jose and Chippy's Blog for Wednesday, May 16th, 07

Today's POD:

Mr. Alcantara was pushing his son Julian, who was in the swing. The arc he made was 3 meters long. When he stopped pushing him, each time the arc decreased 1/6. How man distance did Julian travel after 10 times of swinging?

We found out, that 1/6 of 3, is .5 Because of this, the next term is 2.5. Then, multiply that by 5/6 so we can get the third term, and so on. It is a geometric Sequence. It is good to always find the first few terms.

To find the distance Julian traveled, we plug in the numbers in the equation for the sum of the terms in a geometric sequence.

S10= 3(1-5/6^10) / 1- 5/6

The answer is: 15.09m

We were given a sequence:

1/2, 3/4, 7/8, 15/16

Find the explicit formula:

tn = 2^n-1/2^n

Then, we were asked to graph the sequence. Changes in the calculator were:

Under mode change:
-dot
-sequence graphing

y = nMin? y = nMin_1_
m(n) = 2^n-1/2^n

y = u(nMin)? y = u(nMin) = __1/2__...this gave us the graph of the sequence in the calculator.


This was to learn to use our calculators, but we didn't really need to know this. And, to understand better the term "limit", seeing it in the calculator.

Next scribe: Mac and Nabil