ICTMA 10 Conference Symposium

Bezier curves and surfaces are the preferred tools of designers in the graphic industry. However, they have been primarily used in automobile, aircraft, ship building, in defining landscapes in geology or road construction, also in plastic surgery and in computer animation. They were independently invented by two engineers of the car building industry, Paul de Faget de Casteljau of Citroen and Pierre Bezier of Renault in the early 1970s. This paper describes some of the features (Sections 1-4) and applications (Sections 5-9) of Bezier curves and surfaces taught to high school students at the Kantonsschule Wettingen, Switzerland. The geometric aspects, (Sections 1, 2) were taught to students in the precalculus phase (aged 16-17), the analytic aspects (Sections 3, 4) involving calculus were taught to older students (aged 18-19).