What is geometry good for? How does it relate to our everyday life? Do we really need this? These are the several questions that you can ask yourself and often find yourself stuck in a corner with geometry. Understanding geometry at basic levels is not a difficult task and you can actually help your children to understand these concepts rather easily.
If your child aspires to become an architect but is not interested in geometry, you need to explain that just designing buildings which are beautiful is not sufficient and as an architect, it is important to think about the stability of the building as well! This is where geometry is required. It is very important to understand how different angles and shapes fit with each other to make a building stable. A building needs to withstand strong winds and at the same time, it needs to be capable of withstanding the collective weight of everything inside the building.
What if your child wants to become a NASA technician? Advanced geometry will be required in order to calculate missions and shuttle launches. When a space shuttle leaves Earth and reaches the International Space Station for docking, the technicians need to go through weeks of geometric calculations to ensure that the shuttle attains the right speed and height. One wrong calculation can lead to the failure of the mission because space shuttles are not fed with extra fuel and space does not have any rocket fuel stations!
That was hi-tech science but what about geometry in daily life? Geometry has its application even in sports and what you refer to as a football is actually an oblong spheroid in terms of geometry and depending on its shape, reactions of the football will vary when tossed in air. Same happens in the case of a game of pool. If you do not understand the angles and shoot, you will not be able to figure out the exact position where the cue ball is going to stop on the table. Even in case of baseball, the pitching angle and the angle of contact between the ball and the bat will decide whether you will end up with a high popup infield shot or a deep shot!
There's no geometry in baseball!
Understanding geometry is important because the way we walk, the way we sit, the way we sleep, everything follows geometry. When we don’t follow the proper angles, we face muscle cramps, backaches and other physical problems. In art, geometric angles and calculations lead to precision. Thus, geometry has its roots deep in our everyday life. We live with geometry and we can not avoid this. So, understanding geometry at basic levels is very important and good because we can understand the world around us in a better way using geometry. It becomes rocket science only at advanced levels and we do not need to understand those complex equations and calculations used in scientific researches. Simple concepts of angles can be helpful for us and that is what we need to understand properly.
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That high School kids are still saying that geometry is a waste of time because they can’t see what possible use they would ever have for it, strikes a familiar chord. This was exactly the same conversation some forty-five years ago when I was in the tenth grade. It’s amazing that after four and a half decades, no one is bothering to teach kids how to relate. So children are still asking the same question, “Why do I need to learn this stuff?” However if teachers would tell them, “Circular motion is the foundation of time and space,” it might perk some interest because it’s all about shape, which Wikipedia defines as “the external two-dimensional outline, appearance or configuration of some thing — in contrast to the matter or content or substance of which it is composed.” Additionally, the interesting thing about this concept is that despite the connotation of physical structure we seem to be able to apply it also to the realm of intangibles, so these ideas about shape are taking shape. But the point here is that shape is the foundation and infrastructure of all existence and that the key to success and joy is in the forms and structures of the universe by which we shape our thoughts into action to achieve all objectives. Thoughts, for the most part are responses to stimuli emanating from the world around us, which is a hodgepodge of geometry. Hence, the shapes of this finite world influence, impact and inspire what we think, which, in turn governs all of our actions. Some questions have answers and some don’t, but the bottom line is that we need to look at each of the basic geometric figures as they exist in our language, culture and the world around us so that we may uncover some of the secrets of life to achieve joy and success. Therefore, seeing stimulates thought, thought causes speech, speech transforms to action and action leads to success. So, look, see and enjoy.