Objects

From one perspective, mathematics is the art of creating new knowledge by finding new and interesting relationships among existing mathematical objects. Sketchpad provides you with a rich set of such mathematical objects and with many ways of connecting them. It’s up to you to create those objects and their connections, and then to investigate their behavior, find new relationships, discover symmetry and patterns, and display and present your results.

The objects you can create in Sketchpad fit into several general categories. Some of the objects are purely geometric entities—points, lines, rays, segments, circles, arcs, interiors, loci, and some iterations. Other objects are either numeric or algebraic entities—measurements, parameters, coordinate systems, calculations, and functions. And finally, some objects in Sketchpad—captions and action buttons—are primarily used in descriptions, explanations, and presentations.

This chapter describes the various kinds of objects with which you can work in Sketchpad. Refer to the Toolbox Reference for more information on how to use Sketchpad’s tools to create and modify objects, and refer to the Menu Reference for more details on how to use Sketchpad’s menus.

Subtopics:
Object Attributes
Object Relationships: Parents and Children
Points
Path Objects
Segments, Rays, and Lines
Circles and Arcs
Polygons and Other Interiors
Measurements, Calculations, and Parameters
Coordinate Systems and Axes
Loci
Functions and Function Plots
Iterations and Iterated Images
Tables
Captions
Action Buttons
Pictures