can someone give me an example (or more) of how geometry can be used in real life?

Question

im writing a paper on why analytical geometry is important but i keep getting stuck on examples of how it's useful. can anyone give me an example of how geometry is used in the real world.

Answer 1

surveying

Answer 2

That's a beautiful topic :)
There are heaps of examples. Any FPP game uses very advanced concepts of analytic geometry to convert a description of the world into what the player can see on the screen. Questions of visibility of objects, clipping, perspective are all connected with basic problems of analytic geometry: lines intersecting with polygons (triangles in 3D) or polygons with polygons etc.
Another area is CAD (computer aided design). To build a car or a plane or a house or whatever, people used to build small models. But now, thanks to fast computers using algorithms of analytic geometry we can model this inside a computer and see the building without time-consuming making of a model.
Than, without powerful techniques in computational geometry there would be no movies like Toy Story, Finding Nemo etc...
And everything thanks to some equations describing planes and points :)

An interesting book (but not very easy: undergraduate student level) on this topic is:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1852338016

If you want to play with ray-tracing yourself,
try POV-Ray (free)
http://www.povray.org/

Note to other people: analytic geometry is using coordinate system(s) in an essential way, so examples like calculating the volume of an object are not exactly topics of analytic geometry but rather classical geometry.

Answer 3

Every time someone calculates the square footage of a house or room, they are using geometry.

Answer 4

In construction, whether a house or just about anything, knowing how to figure angles, calculate square footage, or figure the area or volume of 2d or 3d shapes

Answer 5

Calculating the contents (and thus the worth) of a silo of grain, a bushel of apples, etc.: It's the cornerstone of commerce.

Answer 6

you can estimate the height of a tree using only a foot-long ruler and sunlight (using the rules of similar triangels)

Answer 7

Building a deck.

Answer 8

volumes - 2 litre bottles of soda, bottles of beer :)
airplane travel
astronomy calculations
construction
lines of sight
recreation [billiards, golf, ....]
my 13 month old daughters toys ... [shape sorter teaching patterns, balls/spheres - rolling, bouncing, coordination, building blocks - cubes, ....] they are extremely beneficial to her early development.

Answer 9

building a building is all angles and squares is it not?

Answer 10

carpentry