Angles between Vectors

Highlights of the activity

1. This small group activity is designed to give students practice thinking of vectors as geometric quantities.
2. Students work in small groups to symbolically manipulate geometric vectors (without components).
3. The whole class wrap-up discussion emphasizes the relationship between the various operations.

Reasons to spend class time on the activity

Students think of the dot product as a formula for use in computations, such as determining the angle between two given vectors. This activity emphasizes instead the relationship between the sign of the dot product and the nature (acute, right, obtuse) of the angle.

Reflections

• Reflections from the original implementation.

• Reflections from "official" adapters/adopters.

• Reflections from the general public.

Instructor's Guide

• Wiki version

Student Handouts

vcvectorshand.pdf