Monthly Archives for November 2010
Hanukah is way too early this year!
Wednesday evening, December 1st, is the first night of Hanukkah this year. Students look at the Hebrew calendar and appreciate the incredible mathematics involved in creating a calendar that aligns both the moon’s rotation about the Earth and the Earth’s … Continue reading
Rapunzel
image drawn by Marisa Hopkins Disney’s animated movie, Tangled, comes out next week. We’ve shown students some of the Brothers Grimm’s original fairy tale along with giving them a glimpse at the physics involved in the animation of Rapunzel’s hair. … Continue reading
Done with the leaves … now for the snow
Brian has spent too much time analyzing his leaf raking. He has created an investigation that asks students to calculate how long it would take different numbers of rakers to finish cleaning his yard of leaves. Students see the inverse … Continue reading
Not enough mashed potatoes
Using his famous mashed potato recipe, Brian has asked students to change decimals to fractions, to calculate ingredient measures for various-sized Thanksgiving gatherings, to explain their thinking in calculating these figures, and to judge how many servings could be created … Continue reading
Cholera in Haiti
On January 12th of this year, there was a tremendous, 7.0 magnitude, earthquake in Haiti. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed or injured and a million people became homeless. Then on November 5th, Hurricane Thomas hit Haiti. Huge amounts … Continue reading
Veterans Day
As Veterans Day approaches, let your students learn about and appreciate the meaning of the day by analyzing the powerful data that we’ve supplied. Students can use our numbers to create questions for their classmates … questions that are intended … Continue reading
Monopoly
In the board game, Monopoly, does a property’s distance from GO relate to the cost of its rent when you land on it ? Students create scatter plots using Brian’s spread sheet which lists properties, their distances from GO, and … Continue reading
The growth of Facebook
The story of Facebook is an amazing tale about a young man and the fantastic popularity of his creation. Let your students examine the history and evolution of the Facebook phenomenon as they chart the site’s user numbers and calculate … Continue reading
