THE BASKETBALL IS GEOMETRY

The geometry can be found in more areas of what we think, and one of these ones is the sport. Since the sport includes many disciplines, I have made concrete a bit, and I have chosen the basketball, sport that I know enough. There are different aspects of the basketball where the geometry appears. Let's have a look!

The first one is the basketball court. If we observe it, we can see that the court is a rectangle of 28 meters long and 15 meters wide, divided in two halves of 14 meters long. The zone is also a rectangle, of 5,8 meters long and 4,9 meters wide. Thirdly, I would highlight the central circle of the court, where the jump takes place between two players to begin the game. This circunference has a diameter of 3,6 meters. In the 2-points area there is a semi circunference that is 4,6 meters to the hoop, and whose diameter is identical to that of the central circle. Another semicircle that exists is in the zone, whose diameter is 1, 25 meters. There are other measures and plane figures as we can see in the image.

The second aspect encompasses other physical elements that integrate this sport. The basketball board is the first one, whose measures are 1,8 meters long and 1,05 meters wide. Inside it there is a small board, of 0,59 meters x 0,45 meters. The hoop has a diameter of 45,7 cm. Finally, the ball, whose diameter is 23 cm.

The last aspect is the game. During the practice of the basketball the players do movements that are studied in geometry. For example, to defend is advisable to place the legs in a 45-50º angle not to allow that the attacker can overcome the defender. Another example would be the shot. In this case, when a player throws the ball forms a parable in its distance, whereas the player has to place the arm in a 45º angle to throw correctly.

For children it might be an entertaining activity that they were finding the area of the rectangles and circumferences, the radius... in this sport, since they would relate these numbers to concrete things, not simply they would operate numbers of an abstract way. What is more, even a more dynamic and rewarding activity would be that the own pupils went to the court and they were measuring, that means, that they were extracting the information to be treated and analyzed then.