Babars Adventures in Mathletics
Babar was walking down the street one day when all of a sudden he fell into a hole. He kept falling and falling down the black tunnel until he landed with a great "tump" onto a bed. Babar was certainly confused, especially when he spotted his good friend Peter Pan walking towards him. Peter called out a greeting to him but Babar was to busy looking around in wonder because his soft bed had turned int a referees chair and before him was a tennis court. "Do you like tennis?" Peter Pan asked. "Well, yes I guess so" replied Babar. "But what happened?" " What am I doing here?" "Well," Peter said as he started to explain to Babar, "Your going to be a referee in the Mathletics Tennis Championships." "Mathletics?" "What is that?"asked Babar. "Mathletics is when we get to learn about math and its relationships on the real world." "Today its going to be about math and tennis" explained Peter Pan. " Math and tennis?"" They have nothing in common" replied Babar. " You’d be surprised Babar how much math is involved, why you can’t even hit the ball without the help of math" boasted Peter. "But I don’t understand" Babar said. " Lets take a look at these two players as they play a game of tennis and I’ll explain" said Peter.
As Babar watched the two players hit the ball back and forth he tried to think of what math had to do with hitting a ball back and forth. Peter started to explain his statement that he had earlier said. "Do you see the way the players are unconsciously calculation, the distance, the angle and the velocity at which they have to hit the ball." "If you don’t hit the ball with the right velocity and at the right angle the ball will not follow the path the players intended." "This mean that geometry and physics are involved." " Also when you have to keep score it involves addition." "Wow" exclaimed Babar, "I had no idea of the math that is involved in the real world." "No problem Babar" replied Peter Pan. Just then Babar woke up, he looked around at his room, and realized that it was all a dream, a very interesting and informative dream.
Katelin
