This unit consists of 4 extensive worksheets designed to facilitate group work to help students learn how to use trigonometric functions to model cyclical phenomena. It assumes that students have had some exposure to elementary trigonometry of the right triangle and it includes a review of that material. It assumes that students have had little or no exposure to modeling with trigonometric functions.
The primary emphasis is on on sinusoidal modeling. The author believes that this is the easiest modeling for new students to relate to and the author further believes that adding modeling with other trionometric functions would be confusing.
These worksheets are designed for extensive teacher participation and guidance. Students are rquired to make many conjectures during the exercises. The teacher needs to help monitor these conjectures. Therefore, this module is not intended to be a self-study module. However, the author has added extensive notes and formulas into the worksheets to help facilitate student study and review. It is also the hope of the author that students can use these worksheets to help practice reading mathematics.
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