BOTETOURT COUNTY, Va. – Geometry and math can be hard for students to learn so one local teacher found a fun way to show students the concepts.
Barbie is zip-lining off Read Mountain Middle School.
"Doing these project-based learning opportunities is pretty hard as a teacher to stand back and watch them fail or make mistakes, or have to problem solve on their own because I want to jump right in there and help them out, but really the bigger lesson is having them do that for themselves and use each other as a resource," said Stephanie Hufton, a middle school math teacher at Read Mountain.
Today's lesson is the Pythagorean theorem.
For those of you who forgot that part of school--- it's A squared, plus B squared, equals C squared--- or the length of the long side of a triangle, also called the hypotenuse.
Students planned three zip lines: a safe option, an exciting one, and a combination of safe and fun.
"Doing it on paper you don't really understand it but when you see real-life examples you can kind of understand it more," said Madison Myers, who is in eighth grade.
The fun experiment helps students catch on.
"It was a fresh take on this. It was really easy to learn. It's easier to learn something after you do it than just reading it in a textbook," said Darson Daughtridge, who is also in the eighth grade.
Hufton says this is is a new concept but she's hoping students learn something else, too.
"The bigger picture really is how to work with people in a group -- people who they don't normally work with -- and how to make changes on the fly and problem solve," said Hufton.