This week, we started learning about Cross Sections. Cross sections are another way to find the area of a shape using a graph. It has the same idea as the previous rotation methods that we have learned, but does a few things differently. We did an activity in class that was supposed to help us visualize this, but as I missed the first part of the lesson, I struggled with it in the beginning. In the activity, we cut out squares and put them on a graph that we were given, to see how square cross sections work. This allowed us to see that we can take a side length and square it, and then use the functions that are given to create an integral that will allow us to solve. The idea is the same with semicircle cross sections. Use the functions given, and the area formula for a semicircle to make an integral and solve to get the area. While I didn’t understand it perfectly at first, I slowly started to grasp it, and I think that the visual we made helped more as I began to understand the concept better. At first I didn’t really understand why we were putting random squares on our graph but then things started to connect. I’m really excited that this is one of the last things that we will be learning!
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