• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.445-464
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• 2017

This study targeting 10 high school 3rd grade students who have studied space figures in natural sciences track analyzes the process of analogical discovery from the construction of inscribed and circumscribed circles of a triangle to that of inscribed and circumscribed spheres of a tetrahedron through the analytical method using Geogebra. The subjects are divided into two groups of five, the experimental group consisting of those who have experienced analytical method and the comparative group consisting of those who haven't. This research analyzing the process of constructing inscribed and circumscribed spheres of a tetrahedron. Although students of both groups all have an accurate preliminary knowledge of inscribed and circumscribed circles of a triangle, they have difficulty in constructing inscribed and circumscribed spheres of a tetrahedron. However, the students of experimental group who have studied the constructing process of inscribed and circumscribed circles of a triangle in reverse using analytical method and Geogebra can perform analogical discovery finding out the way to construct inscribed and circumscribed spheres of a tetrahedron using analogy by themselves. They can control and explore space figures by visualization. Also, they can immediately examine and provide feedback on the analogizing process of their own. In addition, the process affects the attitude of students toward mathematics positively as well as gives validity to the result of analogy.

• Journal of Computational Design and Engineering
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.183-194
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• 2015

This paper proposes a novel method for visualizing the thickness and clearance of 3D objects in a polyhedral representation. The proposed method uses the distance field of the objects in the visualization. A parallel algorithm is developed for constructing the distance field of polyhedral objects using the GPU. The distance between a voxel and the surface polygons of the model is computed many times in the distance field construction. Similar sets of polygons are usually selected as close polygons for close voxels. By using this spatial coherence, a parallel algorithm is designed to compute the distances between a cluster of close voxels and the polygons selected by the culling operation so that the fast shared memory mechanism of the GPU can be fully utilized. The thickness/clearance of the objects is visualized by distributing points on the visible surfaces of the objects and painting them with a unique color corresponding to the thickness/clearance values at those points. A modified ray casting method is developed for computing the thickness/clearance using the distance field of the objects. A system based on these algorithms can compute the distance field of complex objects within a few minutes for most cases. After the distance field construction, thickness/clearance visualization at a near interactive rate is achieved.