The teacher across the hall is reviewing right triangular trigonometry with his students. He mentions SOH-SAH-TOA and one kid, who has recently transferred from a private school, says, "Ugh - I hate this...it never works". The teacher just looks at her because of her bad attitude with the "Let's give it a chance, huh, and please, don't blurt out stupid comments?" gaze.
So the teacher begins explaining how the "SOH" is just an easy way to remember that the sine of an angle is equal to the ratio of the length of the side opposite the angle to the length of the hypotenuse of the triangle while writing "SOH" on the board.
Then the kid interrupts again. "Oh, that's how you spell it?"
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8 comments:
I had a student who remembered this (well, the permutation CAH-TOA-SOH) with:
Can A Hooker
Take Of A
Set Of Handcuffs
Perhaps inappropriate for some grades :)
After reading that comment, I've forgotten what I was going to say...
but I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be able to think of SOHCAHTOA without laughing.
SOH-SAH-TOA? Is *that* how you spell it?
I don't use that mnemonic, but a few of my students learned it from a tutor last year. The fact that one of them spent the rest of the year calling it "sock-a-twoey" and not being able to remember how to spell it or how it really worked hasn't motivated me to start using it in future years.
Perhaps if I used the version about hookers from earlier in the comments my students would remember better. Alas that, also with remembering that ASS doesn't work because it's just ass, is something I probably can't get away with at this point in my career.
Of course, I let them use some notes on exams so I'd rather trig ratios be slowly memorized through repeated use rather than quickly memorized artificially. (Our state test has a formula sheet with the trig ratios on it, so I see little point in making them memorize them and much point in making them really good at using that formula sheet quickly.)
Dear threesigma,
I'm sorry you're blogging less this year. I hope it's not a symptom of an overwhelming year, and just a sign that you've already said a lot of what you want to say!
Sally Can Tell Oscar Has Hairy Old Ass (but I teach gifted 8th graders, so I can't really use this....or can I?) Sally-Can-Tell has to go on down vertically.
Some of Harry's Children Are His, The Others Aren't
Some Old Hippy Caught Another Hippy Tripping On Acid.
They never forget it!
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