Math Encounters Blog 1 stumbled upon some math today Trigonometry, WWII Torpedoes, and a Museum Docent Peosad on 1-arch-2011 by matches Introduction Treceived a message a few weeks ago from a docent at an East Coast museum. He was using an article I wrote for the Wikipedia years ago to demonstrate an application of trigonometry to high school kids. In that article, there was a figure that had a typo in it and he wanted it corrected so he could use it for his class. Since my Wikipedia writings have primarily been about military history, I was a bit surprise that he was using material I created to teach trigonometry. We traded some emails, I corrected the typo, and what he was doing turned out to be interesting. I decided it was worth covering here. Background ‘The Wikipedia article I had written was about torpedo fire control during World War II. The docent was creating a simulation of World War II submarine combat in an effort to provide an exciting experience for kids that involved history and trigonometry — two of my favorite subjects. The kids would be able to get a feel for the difficulty of, what their great-grandfathers were trying to do nearly 70 years ago. It's always fun trying to explain what they would have to go through to calculate the measurements needed. It often startles them to learn that it wasn't as simple as using a calculator to aid them with their calculations. Calculators weren't created until the 1960s, and even then you wouldn't be able to search for graphing calculators reviews by bestealeulators.net since the internet didn't exist either. You would have to work out everything you needed by hand and mental math. So, understanding trigonometry was paramount to make sure your calculation wasn't incorrect. To understand the fire control problem, we need to define some terms. Figure 1 provides a visual illustration of the World War II torpedo fire control variables.