Category: Geometry

Two 12s or one 18?

Which should we order and why? Two 12-inch pizzas or one 18-inch pizza?  Which will give you more pizza? More crust? Which is the better deal?

Square or Round – which pizza should I buy?

Warm up for π day with this updated activity!
If that slice from Sbarro is from an 18-inch pizza cut into eight pieces, which deal is better when comparing area of pizza and cost?  How does the area of a square pizza compare to the area of a circular pizza?

Valentine’s Day (11 activities)

Have a heart Canstruction – Students use reasoning and approximation to analyze the number of cans of food contained in this one giant heart.  Consider starting out the activity by showing students the picture of the heart and doing a see…

Chocolate heart-shaped raspberry cake

For Valentine’s Day, bake a cake. Students calculate base area or volume of cakes made from 2 cake pan sizes and observe how the volume of the cake changes with the increased pan size.  This is an activity intended to…

Throwing Up 2023

It’s hard to shovel new snow when you have to get your shovel-full over previous snow banks. You have to throw the snow practically straight up. Predict the arc of your shovel throw with a parabola and refine your formula by manipulating the parabolic factors.

MLK and efforts towards racial justice

Timelines for the life and work of Martin Luther King Jr.  – Students create one of two timelines about Martin Luther King Jr’s life or the efforts in America to create a more fair racial balance in the U.S.  …

The Times Square Ball

What does truncation mean? How is the Times Square Ball related to an icosahedron? Let students learn about the crystals and the LEDs that create this beautiful construction.

Beautiful mathematics

Color, measure, design, Sierpinski, spirals, Pythagorean triples, hexadecimal color codes, fractals, string design, modular math, Pascal’s triangle, Fibonacci, polyhedra, build an eclipse … Enjoy!

Before the holidays (16 activities)

We have tons (well, 16) of activities to bring to your class in this last week before the holiday break. Movies, science, art, cooking, economics, weather and the logic of calendars. Enjoy!

Winter Solstice 2022

How is the amount of darkness now related to your location on Earth? Understanding the Winter Solstice. 7.G.3, HSG.C, HSG.GMD.4, HSG.MG.1

Do I have enough wrapping paper?

In this problem based activity students first guess and then try to calculate whether they will have enough paper to wrap this present without taping pieces of wrapping paper together. I have to wrap this box. ⇒     ⇐  …