CSI students start thinking outside the triangle

Utica Center for Science and Industry students are committed to building a better math problem - literally.

Taking a cue from a famous juggler Michael Moschen, students now have a 12 foot triangle in their classroom that will help them study geometric principles.

Students stand in the center of the triangle and bounce a tennis or rubber ball off the sides to study the concept of "centroid," said teacher Stacey Knoll.

"It gets them interested in how to find the center of the triangle," said teacher Stacey Knoll.

Along the way, students also gain a basic understanding on principles related to the points of concurrency, angles of incidence, refraction and reflection.

The 12 foot triangle now housed in Knoll's classroom had its origins in a Youtube video that shows juggler Moschen using a large triangle to bounce rubber balls. Students used the video to study the angles of return for the bouncing balls, similar to concepts used on a pool table.

Over the past few years, students have talked about building their own triangle. This year, ninth-grader Luke Fraylick and his dad decided to take on the project.

"We had to first build it in our house, take the sides apart, and then we had to rebuild it in our math class," Fraylick said, who is also a ninth-grader at Shelby Junior High School.