Similar Triangles Introduction

Somehow this is the week when I am getting caught up on blog posts. Why this week? Apparently extra chaos in my life helps me need to cross things off my to-do list. Two kids with potential concussions and one feeling like throwing up seems to be the motivation I need to blog. Go figure.

Ages ago, in my grade 10 applied class, I made a new intro to similar triangles. I liked it mostly because it was simple and allowed my students to practice other skills they had recently learned, namely right-angle trig and sum of squares (Pythagorean theorem). It looked something like this - what "What do you notice?" at the bottom.

This is what we did with it:

Nothing fancy, but it worked so I thought I would share. I think this qualifies as #unsexymath.

If you would like the file, you can find it here.