Applied Maths trouble

Hey Yall

Hey guys currently in 5th year and have been doing HL app. maths since September .. Covered the topic about the pulleys , speed time graph with the constant motion bit and now doing projectiles .. Ok so I found the first pulley topic relatively ok .. didnt have too much problems and understood it well .. I got lost towards the more difficult questions in the speed time graph and constant motion questions and now in projectiles im almost completely lost if anything with more than a couple unknowns comes up .. I have not done trigonometry in maths yet though .. I was wondering if anyone else is feeling like this and does it pass after a while and you start to understand more or should I be genuinely concerned? I know the methods of the questions like the actual applied maths bit but when it comes to calculations I seem to be off the mark especially with more unknowns .. Is that common ? In maths all ive done so far is Algebra and in the middle of statistics .. Anyone care to elaborate?

CBX

Well I don't do Applied Maths but it's logical that as you cover more in Maths and develop your understanding of maths and your general maths skills then Applied Maths will become easier. I wouldn't be getting too worried now, you have plenty of time until the Leaving Cert to sort things out and the course is short.

As with any subject: the more you practice, the better you will get.

Hey Yall

Our teacher did say to us he isnt expecting us to complete tough trigonometry .. we have 5 classes of it a week so there is a lot of time but i dont feel myself progressing in it is all .. But thanks anyways

yoho139

I don't know what your teacher is thinking doing projectiles without trig... I mean yeah, you can manage without if you memorise the steps, but that's a bit absurd.

That said, how did you not do trig at JC? Sure you weren't just daydreaming at the time?

Daniel2590

Projectiles without trig? :eek: It'll make a lot more sense when you have trig done!

Hey Yall

I did trig in JC alright but I havnt done it at LC level .. He told us usually the students would have done or be doing trig right now but with Project Maths coming in the maths teachers teach the course in a different way

TheBegotten

I'm suprised you're doing connected particles so early, we didn't cover it until the end of 5th Year. Practically everything in applied maths centres around trig, so I'd advise you (even if you haven't done it in normal maths yet) to familiarise yourself with the basics of trig and the proofs of the formulae on page 14-15 of the log tables.

Projectiles can be tricky alright, especially the stuff on an inclined plane (or finding two landing angles, but I can't even remember how to do those...) - the trick is similar triangles and visualising it. Instead of say firing a projectile up a hill, it's being launched straight...but gravity happens to be acting at an angle to the ground, so there's an acceleration of g(sinθ) in the x-axis.

I've a document that explains it better, I'll upload it for you.

Hey Yall

Its not so bad to be honest were only doing the questions in which theres trig we know or simple trig but he said to us hell be revising the topic once we have covered trig in Maths