We were talking about refraction in class the other day. I drew a straight line down the middle of the board to separate our two mediums (imagine water on the left and air on the right). Then I drew a horizontal line to represent the normal to the surface (our reference line for measuring angles). Finally I drew an incoming ray and its refracted ray.
Shortly after, a student referred to this picture as "a graph." I was actually confused, trying to think of a real graph I may have shown them. When I realized what she was talking about, I said "a picture is not a graph - this is a picture." She responded by saying it had a y-axis and an x-axis and it looked just like a Cartesian coordinate system. I am now recalling an incident last year when a math teacher came and told me that I was teaching the kids the wrong thing. Apparently my students told her that I had insisted the range was the horizontal axis (making the domain the vertical one by default I suppose). I explained that, in projectile motion, we call the maximum horizontal distance a projectile attains its "range". Only now do I realize the students were once again confusing a picture for a graph:
Shortly after, a student referred to this picture as "a graph." I was actually confused, trying to think of a real graph I may have shown them. When I realized what she was talking about, I said "a picture is not a graph - this is a picture." She responded by saying it had a y-axis and an x-axis and it looked just like a Cartesian coordinate system. I am now recalling an incident last year when a math teacher came and told me that I was teaching the kids the wrong thing. Apparently my students told her that I had insisted the range was the horizontal axis (making the domain the vertical one by default I suppose). I explained that, in projectile motion, we call the maximum horizontal distance a projectile attains its "range". Only now do I realize the students were once again confusing a picture for a graph:
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