Day 14 - TI-Nspire

I've always been impressed the old TI-83&84 graphing calculators as tools for analysis in physics. The TI-Nspire is even cooler. Our math department has decided that all students need to have this calculator so I get to benefit from them having it as well.

For graphing data I like this better as students can name the columns with their variables, with the older TIs they would just be L1 and L2. For the novice learners, I think this will be important. My only major gripe is they still can't do a Variable Power Regression.

For the more astute, you may have noticed the Nspire doesn't come in blue. Apparently they do make rubber skins for them to offer a bit of protection. The only other thing to know is they have a built in rechargeable battery. With the backlit color screen it doesn't seem to last as long as a TI-84 with AAAs, which means you need to have a charging cord handy on test days. There will always be at least one student per class who will need it.