HOW TO RELATE QUADRICS IN MATHEMATICS AND ARCHITECTURE?

We teach mathematics at the school of Architecture of the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia. The marks of our students are similar to those obtained in the majority of the subjects of the degree. However, we have observed that many of our students are not interested in mathematics so much. This lack of interest is mainly based in the fact that their perception of maths usefulness in their future work is low.

In this paper we present the experience that we have done in Ampliation of Mathematics (AMA), a mathematics subject in the second year of architect degree. The aim of this work is to show the relationship between quadrics (one of the topics of AMA) and architecture. Our intention with this experience is that our students realize the importance of the AMA contents in architecture.
The students taking part in this experience have prepared a specific material as a proof of connection between quadrics and architecture. This material can be reusable in next years in class as introduction and motivation of the quadrics topic.

The main result of this experience is that we have managed to relate quadrics with architecture in an easy and clear way. Moreover, students have played the leading role since they have been who have mainly made all the work. And the work made can be reusable in future years.