Lesson 16 — Activity 3: Angles in Everyday Life



Getting Ready


In this activity, you will think about how important the measurement of angles is in different types of workplace environments.

          

Courtesy of Getty
                  

Think about This:


Angles are very important in the business of construction.


Carpenters must measure angles to make sure that everything will fit together. For example, you can’t make a square room without four angles of 90°.



Here's another example of the use of angles in a workplace environment. Click here to watch a video that demonstrates how angles are used in building bicycles and in choosing a bike size.


Digging Deeper

When dealing with angles, you have to decide just how accurate you have to be. If you are giving someone directions, it is probably okay to say, "Go northeast" or to point and say, "It's over there." These allow the person to have the information they need to complete their task. It would be confusing to most people if you answered their question with something like "Go at an angle of 54° to get to where you want to go."


However, sometimes it is very important to be accurate. If you are navigating a ship from England to Canada, you must know the EXACT angle or degree that will get you to the proper destination. This is the same for airplanes.


Courtesy of Pixabay


And what about if you were planning a dream bedroom? Do you have to be accurate when figuring out the angles of the corners in this room? You do if you want the room to be the proper shape!


Let's say that your room is going to be square in shape with sides that are 6 m long. If it is exactly square, each corner will have an angle of 90°. But let's say that you don't measure the angle properly and use an angle of 94° for a corner. This little bit of inaccuracy over 6 m means that the wall will be an extra 4 centimetres long! Your room is no longer square!


Courtesy of Pixabay


This leads us to the question of just how accurate should you be when answering a question? It totally depends upon the question. Just as our examples above show, if you are giving general directions to someone on how to get to the store or which direction a town is from where you live, an estimate of angles is fine. For example, "Go left, then take the first right" or "Hinton is west of Edson." If you are actually measuring something or are navigating to a certain point, you must be very accurate!