Once upon a time, a turtle lived in a large, spacious forest.

One day, the turtle was on his merry way

when he saw a big banner strung between two trees. “BIG RACE TODAY,” it read. The turtle felt
discouraged. How could he ever win when he was so slow and sluggish? But, after taking a closer look at
the sign, the turtle discovered that the competitors had to solve math problems as well as run. While he
wasn’t very good at running, the turtle loved math. He decided to enter, confident that his problem-
solving skills would help him win the race.

BIG RACE TODAY!!

Sign up below!!
Math is involved*

Before starting the race, the turtle wanted to calculate how far he would have to go. He knew that the
track was in the shape of a 30-60-90o triangle and he knew the length of one of the sides, as shown
below.

Can you, dear reader, help the turtle calculate the perimeter of the track? Here’s a hint: 30-60-90o
triangles have a special pattern that corresponds with the length of their sides. Look at the back of the
book to find the pattern that will help you solve the problem.

Yes, you’re right! The perimeter of the track is (2√3) +6 miles, or about 9.46 miles.

The turtle was glad he knew how far he had to go now. He prepared to go on the race and did some
math problems to get ready as well.

The turtle arrived at the starting point of the race soon after, excited to solve some math problems.
However, his hopes were dashed when he saw his only other competitor: a hare.

How am I going to beat a hare? he thought. They run so fast!

The turtle tried to stay positive, hoping that his math skills could put him ahead.

With a loud bang, the race begun. The hare took off, zooming through the track, leaving the turtle far,
far behind. The turtle plodded along, slowly but surely making progress.
He arrived at the first math problem shortly after. He was surprised to see the hare still there, looking
very confused. The problem read,

“Given that the measure of an angle is 120o, what is its measure in radians?

The turtle was confused at first, but as he read the problem a second time, he understood what he had
to do to solve it. He used the ratio of degrees to radians, which is (π radians)/180o. This gave him an
answer of (2π)/3.

A bird, who was the judge of the race, confirmed the turtle’s answer.

“You are correct!” she sang. “Keep going!”

The turtle began to tread along, happy that he was ahead. But after a while, the hare went dashing by
the turtle, in the lead once more.

They both arrived at the next problem soon after. It read,

“Given that the measure of an angle is (6π radians)/5, what is its measure in degrees?”

The hare came to this question and was stumped. He tried multiplying (6π radians)/5 by (π
radians)/180o, and he got (π radians)2/150.

“Oh no,” chirped the bird to the hare. “It looks like you’ve done something wrong.”

Can you find out what the hare did wrong? Here, I’ll give you a hint. Look at the formula page at the
back of the book and find the ratio used to convert from radians to degrees.

Oh yes, thank you, dear reader, for helping the hare! You’re right, he used the wrong ratio! He should
have flipped the ratio he used. The correct answer is 2160.

After showing the correct answer to the bird, the hare continued on his way. Once again, the hare’s lack
of math knowledge led him to be behind the turtle; however, he was a fast runner and caught up to the
next checkpoint, where another math problem was given. It said:

“Mr. Bunny wants to build a fence down the diagonal of his 2-by-2-mile property. What is the length of
the fence?”
The turtle and the hare were both confident in doing this problem. They recalled the properties of
special right triangles. Mr. Bunny’s square-shaped property could be split into two special right triangles,
as shown above. When a triangle has two 45o angles and one 90o angle, the length of its sides always
follows a pattern. Using this pattern, both the hare and the turtle solved the problem. They both got 2√2
miles, or about 2.83 miles, as their answers.

The bird piped once more, “You are both correct! Keep going!”

The turtle and the hare went on, the hare regaining the lead.

They came to another math problem a few miles ahead. It read:

“A field of flowers forms a sector with the dimensions shown. Find the length of the fence and the area
of the field.”

The turtle knew how to do this problem. He converted 90o into radians using the ratio
(π radians)/180o and found that π/2 was 90o. From here, the turtle used the formula for the length of an
arc and the area of a sector to solve the problem, found on the formula page in the back of the book. He
got about 314 feet for the arc length, and 31,416 feet2 as the area of the sector.

“That’s correct,” the bird tweeted, as she checked the turtle’s work. “You can move on!”

The turtle plodded along, leaving the struggling hare behind. There were still many problems to go, but
the turtle persevered and went on.

He soon came to the next problem. It said:

“Find the reference angle θ’ for θ= -130o.”

The turtle understood the question but was confused what the symbol θ meant. He asked the bird what
it represented.

She sang, “It represents theta, a letter in the Ancient Greek alphabet. We use this symbol to represent a
variable in math. It is just like using x to designate a number value.”
“I understand now,” said the turtle. He knew that θ was coterminal with 230o, meaning that both angles
had terminal sides that coincided. From here, the turtle subtracted 180o from 230o, since he had to find
the reference angle, which is the acute angle formed by the terminal side of θ and the x-axis. Essentially,
he found the angle measure needed to make -130o reach the x-axis. 230o- 180o gave the turtle a final
answer of 50o.

“That is correct!” chirped the bird. “Continue on!”

The hare was still left behind on the other problems, since he didn’t understand math as well as the
turtle did. The turtle kept going, slowly but steadily finishing the race.

He arrived at the next problem. It read:

“Find the sine, cosine, and tangent of θ= 270o.”

He remembered that sine(sin), cosine(cos), and tangent(tan) were ratios of the side lengths of right
triangles. The turtle sketched out a unit circle, which is a circle with a radius of 1 and a midpoint at the
origin, in the sand and drew the angle 270o. He saw that it was at the point (0, -1) on the unit circle. He
knew that the ordered pair was in the format (cos, sin). He then knew that sin= -1 and cos= 0. The turtle
knew that to find the tangent, he just had to divide sin by cosine. Dividing
-1/0 gave the turtle an undefined value, so he knew that tan= undefined.

“You got it right!” the bird sang. “Wonderful job!”

The turtle kept going, and soon after he faced another problem. It read:

“You’re so close! Solve this puzzle to continue forward! I have a triangle with angles 90o, 35o, and 55o.
On the opposite side of the 55o angle, there is a side with a length of 10 cm. What are the two other side
lengths?”

The turtle remembered the Law of Sines and made the equation 10/sin (55) = B/sin (35) to find the
other leg. He then multiplied both sides with sin (35) to get B = 10/sin (55) * sin (35). This led to an
answer of B = around 7.00 cm. To find the last missing side, he simply used the Pythagorean Theorem.
Using this, he put 10 and 7.00 cm for A and B, respectively. He then got 100 + 49.03, or 149.03, = C2.
Then he took the square root of both sides, leaving him with C = around 12.21cm. So, the two other
sides were around 7.00 cm and 12.21cm.

While the turtle kept going, the hare was far behind. In an effort to catch up, he tried to take a shortcut
through the deep, dark woods. The hare kept running as fast as he could, dodging trees, bushes and
branches. After a while, he stopped to catch his breath. He looked around, trying to see where he was,
but realized that he was in fact very, very lost.

The hare went a bit further to find a large, deep river. He observed the river, trying to see if he could
swim across it. While doing so, he saw that the waves in the river looked much like the graph of a sine
function.
Can you, dear reader, write a function for the waves in the river? Hint: Use the formulas page at the end
of the book. Well, first we can see that it’s a sine function because its x-intercepts are at 0, π, and 2π.
This means we can use the function f(x) = a*sin(bx) to represent this graph. We know that b = 1 because
the period is still 2π, and that a = 2 because the wave is 2 feet tall and below the ground line, or our “x-
axis”. So, the function of the waves is f(x) = 2sin(x). But anyways, continuing on with the story…

The hare tried to find a way to go around the river, but it was so long that he couldn’t. He realized that
he had to make a bridge to cross the river. The hare needed to figure out the distance across the river to
make the bridge.

To do this, he marked a point on his side of the river that directly across from a large boulder. The hare
then walked 100 meters to the right of the point and measured a 79o angle between the point and the
boulder. He drew this diagram below illustrating the measurements he had made:

The hare had to find the width w. He had one angle, 79o. He decided to use tangent to solve. He set up
an equation to find w: tan(79o) = w/100. After isolating w, the hare got the equation w= tan(79o) *100.
He plugged it into his calculator and got an answer of about 514.45 meters.

The hare now knew what length he had to make his bridge. With the help of his friends, the hare built
the bridge in no time and scurried across the river. There, he saw the turtle arriving at the last math
problem of the race. The hare scampered over and began to work. Whoever finished this problem and
crossed the finish line would win the race! With this in mind, the hare began to read the question. It
said:

“Welcome to the last and final problem before victory! Congratulations on making it this far! Here is
your final question: You measure the angle of elevation from the ground to the top of a tree as 32o.
When you move 50 meters closer to the tree, the angle of elevation is 53o. What is the height of the
tree?”

The turtle, who was also reading the question, decided to draw a model of what was going on in the
problem.

He set up an equation as follows: tan(32o) *(y+50) = tan(53o) *y. This equation allowed the turtle to find
the value of y. Using this value, he could then set up a ratio using tangent to find the height of the tree.
He got a value of 44.34 meters as y. Then, he knew that x= tan(53o) *44.34. This gave the turtle a final
answer of 58.84 meters.

“That is correct!” chirped the bird. “You can continue to the finish line!”

The turtle slowly trudged along, making his way to the finish line. The hare, on the other hand, was
having a very hard time completing the final problem. When he did finish, the hare saw that the turtle
was about to cross the finish line!

Though the hare sprinted as fast as he could, the turtle set foot on the finish line just a second before
the hare. The turtle celebrated his victory. He knew that his math skills had helped him win the race and
was glad that he payed attention in math class.

The hare was sad, but then understood that he needed to do more math and practice more problems.

Both the hare and the turtle went on, and lived happily ever after.

THE END!
 Formulas:

1. 30-60-90 Triangle:

2. 45-45-90 Triangle:

3. Radians to Degrees/Degrees to Radians Conversion:

4. Length of an Arc:

5. Area of a Sector:

6. Sine Function Graph, Amplitude, and Period: