Making triangles

Students study the concept of triangle inequality, which determines if three positive numbers can serve as the side lengths of a triangle. This principle states that a triangle is possible if the largest of the three numbers is smaller than the sum of the other two. To explore this, students experiment with various combinations of three natural numbers. They investigate whether these numbers can form a triangle and, when they do, students classify and construct the corresponding triangle. Additionally, they learn to calculate the perimeter of these triangles.

This lesson also reviews content from Year 7 to enable students to successfully engage in four related lessons that explore the Year 8 Pythagoras' theorem content.

Resource details
Year level
Year 7 Year 8
Purpose
Teaching resource
Strand
Measurement Space
Topic
Algorithms Area, volume and surface area Computational thinking Shapes and objects
Audience
Teachers
Format
Webpage
Numeracy progression
Understanding geometric properties (P4, P7) Understanding units of measurement (P8) Proportional thinking (P6)
Publisher
Commonwealth of Australia
Copyright
© 2024 Commonwealth of Australia. Creative Commons BY 4.0.
Keywords
congruent algorithm
Other terms
similarity Maths Hub lesson plan