Getting Ready For The Test

How many parabolas do you see? ;-)

Some Reviews
You can read a review of some of what we've learned here. Scroll down towards the bottom of the page to see some neat animations.

We've learned about all sorts of things you can do to the graph and equation of a parabola. We've also spent some time learning how to read the equation of a parabola. This is a good little review of what we've learned. (Scroll down a little bit and you'll see a button marked [click here to start]. It will open a new window that will allow you to see, instantly, how changing the values of a, h and k effect the graph of a parabola. Play with all three sliders.)

Here is another good review of the material we've covered so far. Everything is clearly explained with several examples all of which have detailed solutions. About a third of the way down the page you'll find an applet that you can play with and see the effect it has on the equation of the parabola. The last example includes a carefully explained solution to the area problem we were discussing in class the other day.

Some Movies
I know some of us are still struggling with completeing the square. Well, help is here. I've got a brief video taped lecture you can watch to help you with this material over the weekend if you need it. The movie is of an instructor from the University of Idaho.

In order to watch the video you need to download the free realaudio player from here. (It's a little more than 11 Mb so if you have a slow internet connection this isn't a very good option for you.) After that, just click on the link below for help with completeing the square!

• Solving Quadratic Equations by completing the square
  (9 min. 58 sec.)

Here is another video that covers some of the material we've been studying:

• Sketching the graph of a quadratic function using transformations
    (10 min. 59 sec.)

If you have trouble understanding anything: "Pause ... Rewind ... Repeat ..." until it makes sense. ;-)

Some Quizzes
Here are some online quizzes you can also try to get ready for Monday:

• Graphs and Equations (5 questions)


• More Graphs & Equations (5 questions)


• Graphs and Equatins Again (5 questions)


• All About Parabolas (5 questions)


• More About Parabolas (5 questions)

Those last two you can take over and over again. The questions will keep changing!

Learn Hard!! ;-)