I chose to model a playground because I grew up loving playgrounds and all the unique structures you could find in them. Playgrounds are made up of lots of cool shapes applicable to multivariable calculus. The slide, for example, is just a long cylinder. For my project, my slide is a combination of cylinders made using polar coordinates then arranged together. The climbing structure was a very clear use of polar and spherical coordinates. The structure is made up of semicircles that cross each other in 3D space as well as horizontal circles that connect the semicircles. When the circles lined up with the xz or yz plane, I could use polar coordinates, but when the semicircle crossed through planes, the spherical coordinates were useful to rotate it around the z axis.
Another concept that showed up in my poster were lines using parametric equations, which I used for my swing. I found that lines were easier to arrange in space if I made them with parametric equations. The seat of my swing set was not made with a parametric equation, but instead with an f(x,y) polynomial function. The seat was a slight bowl, which we learned about in class. Overall, by the end of this project, I became a lover of parametric equations.
