NavList:

Bryan,

Yep, welcome to the NavList.
I agree with Frank Reed. You should definitely look at John Karl’s book “Celestial Navigation in the GPS age (revised & expanded edition).” It’s very different than all the other books, particularly in ways that would be helpful in teaching math. First, in just a few pages it gives the fundamental principles, which are basically mathematical concepts, but can be understood by anyone. These are not discussed in most other books, and when they are, they’re wrong.

Second it doesn’t shy away from trig functions (although they can be easily optionally skipped). As I recall, my high school trig did not include spherical geometry, but with a trig-function background, you could introduce spherical trig with the relevant formulas. Then students could readily apply this new knowledge to the basic CN reduction problem of transferring from altitude/azimuth coordinates to lat/lon coordinates.

In short, I agree with others that CN could fit well into a HS math course if you stick closely to the math concepts, using the many other CN factors (altitude corrections, instruments, astronomy & the N. Almanac, history, etc.) only as an interest-perking enrichment.

Good Luck,
Zubenelgenubi

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