Program / Event Details

FOR Grades 8-12
A variety of principles in Mathematics can be illustrated by a Cuban Salsa dancing circle. This style of Salsa is done by couples in a circle with frequent partner exchanges. Dancers need to maintain a well formed circle—which means this: If a line is drawn between each leader and follower in a Cuban Salsa circle, the line would be a tangent to the circle. And if you extended the lines between each pair of leaders and followers, you would be drawing a regular polygon.
By diagramming these lines and circles at the board, many other relationships can be observed. Congruent triangles are created when radii to certain points on the circle are drawn, and students can prove congruence between some of the triangles. The polygon so constructed would be an equilateral polygoncircumscribed around a circle, etc. In this program students dance and then diagram the dance formation, answering questions about these geometric relationships.

See: www.DanceInTime.com and www.MathTeacherHelp.com