One of the aspects of having an assigned project like this is that there are so many different avenues one can go down. This reality can be both exciting and overwhelming because the number of avenues one can travel is infinite. How do you narrow it down to one specific topic?

Human nature would have us start the narrowing process by picking topics that, perhaps are familiar to us, or that we are interested in researching. But sometimes, the topic finds us and we cannot seem to wrestle it away from us no matter how hard we try or how little interest we may have in that topic initially. I believe the latter account occurred to me in this case.

As I mentioned in the introduction, a friend of mine and I were talking about his trip. He definitely sparked my interest on some of the geometry he observed, which superceded any apathy I had about crop farming or irrigation systems. If somebody told me at the beginning of my M.Ed. program that I would be spending three weeks on researching and interviewing professors on the inner-workings of crop irrigation system design, I most likely would responded in disbelief.

Once I made the commitment to take on this topic, I spoke with a professor, named Dr. Nick Hill, in the school of Agronomy and Soil Sciences. He was instrumental in getting me started on my journey for the research aspect of the project. His interest in my project literally got me fired up about it as well! He gave me some great resources to peruse and was willing to meet with me to discuss follow-up questions that I had. I cannot thank him enough.

On the geometry side, the vast majority of these discoveries were original thoughts. However, I must credit Keith Leatham, a doctoral student in the Mathematics Education Department, for pointing me in the right direction on constructing the fixed point that allowed the green circle, in our first construction, to remain totally in tact within the square "land mass" and without disappearing. Again, the mathematics involved with that construction, lead me down a road I was not expecting to take, but very necessary in order to prove that the construction of the two circles worked.

I realized rather quickly that there was more information on irrigation system design than could feasibly go into this project. I found myself having some difficulty limiting what to include in the project because I was enjoying the learning element of the research. Moreover, every sub-topic that I uncovered seemed to have some direct or indirect tie into my ultimate concentration, sprinkler irrigation systems. In enjoying the learning element of this project, I do admit to losing track of time. It is quite possible that I will be working on this project after the proposed deadline. As alluded to before, sometimes the project becomes bigger than the assignment itself. I must admit that I am enjoying learning about a topic that I never imagined I would be learning in a mathematics course (please excuse the somewhat euphoric self-awareness).

I think the way I discovered this topic (or should I say, "how the topic discovered me") served as a major source of inspiration to set aside any disinterest on crop irrigation and plow on through anyway (excuse the pun!). It not only gave me some good geometric situations to work through, but I definitely grew an appreciation for what farmers need to do in order to cultivate and irrigate a high-yield crop. It was also a great lesson, as a secondary math teacher, to verify for myself that there is, truly, mathematics everywhere around us. One simply needs to stick their head out their front door and take a closer look.

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