[IAEP] Sugar DIgest 2008-09-22

[Karl Ramberg]

Walter Bender wrote:
> === Sugar Digest ===
>
> 1. Trisecting angles: The French mathematician Évariste Galois
> published three papers in 1830 that laid the foundations of an
> algebraic proof of why is it not possible to trisect *every* angle in
> a compass and straightedge construction, something the Ancient Greeks
> knew, but could not prove. However, what is often overlooked is that
> the Greeks could trisect angles, using a different set set of
> instruments. What does this history lesson have to do with Sugar Labs?
> Two separate but related discussions have dominated the OLPC-Sur list
> this past week: the Microsoft announcement regarding a Windows XP
> pilot in Peru and the lack of a square root function in Turtle Art,
> both of which can be seen through the lens of abstract
> algebra—apologies in advance for overreaching with this analogy.
>
> Let me summarize the Turtle Art discussion first. Some teachers in
> Uruguay are teaching the Pythagorean Theorem and were stymied by the
> lack of a square root function in Turtle Art. They wanted to
> demonstrate that the length of the diagonal of a square is equal to
> the square root of the sum of the square of each side. In psuedocode,
> they wanted to build the following construct:
>
> repeat 4 (forward 100 right 90)
> right 45
> forward sqrt ((100*100) + (100*100))
In Etoys it is pretty straight forward to make this script, look at 
attached picture.

Karl
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