The shape of the baseball field is full of math and geometry! This is a wonderful way to connect ideas from math class to the real world and the everyday lives of your students. Whether or not your students participate in the game of baseball, baseball has been a very large part of American culture and history.

Some of your students may have never thought of the baseball diamond as a square. Post a picture in your classroom of the bases from a birds eye view. Point out that when you connect each base with a line you have a perfect square!

Questions to ask your students:

How far is it from home plate to first base? 1st to second? 2nd to third? 3rd to home?

How far does the catcher have to throw the ball to get it to 2nd base?

How can we figure this out?

What information do we need?

Possible way to implement this in your classroom:

Have pictures of baseball fields posted around the room or on each students desks. Have students partner up in pairs or groups of three.  Have these questions written on the board and release them to figure it out! Make sure you have previously taught the Pythagorean Theorem, but do not tell them this is the method they should be using. Let your students decide that this is a real life application of the Pythagorean Theorem. Once students have found their answers have them present their answers, process, and how they know they are right!

 

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.8.G.B.7
Apply the Pythagorean Theorem to determine unknown side lengths in right triangles in real-world and mathematical problems in two and three dimensions.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.WHST.6-8.7
Conduct short research projects to answer a question (including a self-generated question), drawing on several sources and generating additional related, focused questions that allow for multiple avenues of exploration..