Saturday, January 15, 2005

British Maths Impediment 2

So with one of my Year 8 classes (that's like 7th grade for those of you keeping track at home), we were discussing angles. We said that angles are two lines that intersect at a vertex. (Still with me?) And since there is a lot of vocabulary in maths, we were talking about the meaning of intersect.

In America, I generally say, "What do we call the place where two roads meet? That's right. It's called an intersection."

In England, when talking about two roads meeting, it is necessary to mention that in America, we don't have many roundabouts. (In fact, I could only think of one, perhaps two, that I've seen. And that leads to the question, asked in a horrified and amazed voice, "What do you have?" Eventually, though, we get back to the original question, "What do we call the place where two roads meet?"

The answer, of course, is a junction.

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