Category: geometry
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Post-it Notes animation
Artifact This video of some amazing stop-motion animation using post-its dubbed ‘Deadline.’ Guiding Questions How long did this take? What’s the time-length of each frame? How many post-its were used? How many of each color? Something about coordinate transformation? Can we do this? Suggested Activities Have students use coordinate geometry and transformations to make their…
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I’m in love with a suitcase; ‘Readymade’ Suitcase Project (Part 1)
My job affords me the opportunity to travel all over the country and observe teachers putting their best feet forward. Problem is, I’ve never been much of a traveller. I’m terrible at packing. Therefore, I could really use something like this: This is a project suggested by Readymade magazine. I don’t want to gush too…
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A single robot-made rainbow ; what does it mean?
Artifact This amazing video of a rainbow-painting robot. (h/t: Science Friday.) Guiding Questions How much paint did this guy need of each color? What’s the radius of the rainbow? or, What’s the length of the arm that moves in a semi-circle that paints the rainbow? Which color will run out soonest? And how much sooner?…
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Pythagoras and Plants ; Aunt Bitty’s Gardens
Continuing from last week, we have another potential Pythagorean’s Theorem Project/Problem. This one was sent in by Steve. =================================== AUNT BITTY’S GARDENS Launch: My Aunt Bitty has a business creating “designer gardens”. These are beautiful little triangular gardens that fit into a particular space–usually the corner of a yard. You tell her your space, and…
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Pythagoras and Pele; Gooooooooooooaaaaaaaa… (to be continued)
…ooooaaaaalllll! There’s about a hundred different ways you could use the following artifacts to construct a lesson around Pythagorean’s Theorem. So I’ll just toss out all the artifacts and let you, esteemed teacher, take it from there. I’d love to get feedback and suggestions on how to implement these materials in the comments below. Artifacts…
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Is there anything cooler than a math tattoo? (A: yes, pretty much everything)
As I mentioned last time, the Pythagorean Theorem is a difficult concept to have students discover intuitively. So we’re focusing on it specifically this week. If you have any activities or ideas, please let me know. Or tweet it to me. Here’s one sent in by Kevin. ======================================== A math nerd (Let’s say her name…
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How big is Mega Maid’s vacuum bag; “Spaceballs”
Artifact Scene from Mel Brooks’ classic, Spaceballs. Start off by simply showing it (or any combination of the split scenes) to your students (apologies if there are advertisements, you can skip them in like 5 seconds): Now, I’m not sure if you’d want to show the entire scene in a classroom setting, both because it’s rather…
emergent math 