Exploring Coordinates and Vectors

Coordinates and vectors are very useful tools for working out properties of lines and shapes drawn on a dotty grid. Have a look at the problems and see how you can use these tools to understand what's going on.

René Descartes and the Fly on the Ceiling

The coordinate system we commonly use is named after the French mathematician René Descartes, and was (allegedly) inspired by a fly on the ceiling.

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Coordinates of Corners

Can you find a quick way to determine whether four coordinates are the corners of a square?

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Are We Nearly There?

Try to visualise the route taken by the arrows in our animation. What patterns do you notice?

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Vectors Round a Square

Explore the properties of vectors and find out what happens when you use them to describe a journey round a square.

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Exploring Diagonals

Play with the interactivity and see what you notice. What interesting questions are there to ask about the diagonals of rectangles?

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Areas from Vectors

A parallelogram can be defined by two vectors. Can you discover a relationship between the two vectors and the area of the parallelogram?

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Dotty Grids Resources

Here are some resources to help you explore dotty grids, including some printable grids and an interactive environment.