Since its founding in 1837, the campus of Mount Holyoke College has contained plenty of lawns. Each of the college’s dormitories is surrounded by a small or large lawn. Naturally, the college hires professionals to handle all of the necessary lawn care. This is very true if you want to get rid of lawn voles as well.
During one afternoon in February of 1972, those lawn and gardening professionals witnessed an odd site. They could see a woman leading a group of students over various sections of the college’s landscaping. She would sometimes pause and thrust a stick into some of the snow that had covered one or more slopes.
From a distance, it looked as though that one woman might be teaching a class to girls who hoped to become architectural landscapers. She appeared ready to show them how to assess the angles of various landscapes. Indeed, she was focusing on the angle associated with different slopes. However, she was not conducting a class that concentrated on architectural principles.
Instead, she was giving her calculus class a “field trip.” That particular professor had chosen to use the existing features on the campus to illustrate the shapes and angles that were being defined by various mathematical expressions. Each of those expressions was something that could only be understood by a student of calculus.
Now every mathematics department at every college and university should consider repeating this interesting approach. Certainly such institutions have distinctive features on their campus. Those features probably give the landscaped area sections that could be used to illustrate the shape defined by a certain mathematical expression.
By actually viewing such shapes, students can better appreciate the significance of each expression. In that way, a lawn’s slope or angle might help to enhance the value of the material presented in the classroom. The benefits of that enhancement can not be calculated, but neither can they be refuted. More here