Ordinarily, when you find the slope of a line, you need two points. What about the slope of a parabola? Well, it doesn't have just one slope; it has infinitely many slopes, one at each point on the graph. So how are you supposed to calculate a slope that changes at every point. That's a fine question, and it's one this project seeks to answer. Realize that upon completing this project, you will have just learned a bit of Calculus. Now how smart do you feel?

One last reminder: You may work collaboratively to complete the document below. Plan a project date, use Skype, consult the Internet or a teacher (me?), the point is for you to understand the concepts. You'll be applying them on a short quiz in class. The document below is worth 1/3 of the project grade, and the in-class, independent quiz will be worth 2/3 of the project grade.

The Derivative and Tangent Line Problem

In this video The Cool Math Guy introduces the Tangent Line Problem and practically completes your project for you. Notice at about the 5:30 mark, The Cool Math Guy starts getting really Calculusy (just made that up). He uses delta x, but we use h in our project. Also, don't worry about taking the limit. That's something we'll save for your actual Calculus class. Duration_9_58

Finding Slope of a Tangent Line

In this video, as suggested in the comments, the guy actually finds the slope of a tangent line using the limit definition. This is similar to what you are doing on Q19-Q22. Essentially the only difference is that your project does not use the limit notation. Duration_6_20