Maths meets hurling!

Post date: Apr 23, 2018 12:41:15 PM

Our challenge was to line out the pitch for the boys hurling match. We were trying to make the lines as straight as Mr Phelan can. We used maths to figure it out.

The two goal posts are normally left on the 21 metre line. Using a trundle wheel we measured the distance from one 21 m line to the other one. We wanted to put 5 flags between each corner flag, so we divided the length by 6. This gave us the distance between each flag. Then we used a tape to measure 8 m from the sideline. Each flag would be 8m from the sideline. So two teams worked on each side of the pitch and laid out their flags.

Trouble!

We measured to the wrong line and our overall length was wrong. We had measured 72m, but the actual length was 96m. Therefore we ended up using 2 extra flags on each side.

Result

We ended up with a beautiful, symmetrical pitch.