Two activities – Students calculate how large Columbus must have thought the circumference of the Earth was if he reached the East India when he landed in the Bahamas + history of who lived there. In the second activity, students use latitude and longitude to analyze the distances Columbus’s trip involved.
Do you think that Barbie can out-earn Avatar? Students study the numbers, recognize the need for an inflation adjustment, get to share their observations about the movie and its messages, and draw their own conclusions about how far Barbie will go as a money-maker.
Students use our recent data to graph, analyze and hypothesize about the affect of the new MLB rule changes.
An Einstein aperiodic tile has just been discovered. Find out what that means and why it is significant. Plus – play with the tiles. Do you want to tile your shower floor with these? Could a tile setter pull this off?
This day is known for pranks and puzzles. Try one of these 4 activities on April Fools Day. Ask students to analyze where I made my mistake PerplexingProblem.pdf For members we have solutions. PerplexingProblem-solution.pdf …
Brand new! What’s with the March Equinox? Does it really affect our lives? Is it just some astronomical occurrence? Students calculate the daylight hours at the March Equinox by time between longest and shortest days. They examine the progression of…
Will you wake up and go to sleep earlier or later on that Sunday?
What kind of chart or picture could you draw to help you compare before and after daylight savings time?
Will your Sunday seem longer or shorter?
Is daylight savings time still useful?
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!
In this activity students see the inverse relationship between number of workers and time to complete the whole job. They graph hyperbolas and consider how long the extreme condition of zero people raking might take to complete the job.
In 1980, a gallon of gas costs $1.22. Today’s prices are a lot higher. Is that because the price has gone up or because in 1980 you could buy a lot more with $1.22 than you can buy today?
In this activity students compare team wins with team salaries in the four major North American sports … the NBA, NFL, MLB and NHL. Students use data from recent seasons to create scatter plots comparing wins and salaries for each sport
Try one of these 4 activities on April Fools Day. Where did that extra dollar go? Mystical Mathematical Mind Reader; perplexing missing square in the triangle; and Robert Kaplinsky’s foil prank.
Students work with the geodesic icosahedron of the Time’s Square Ball by slicing an icosahedron. How are properties valued according to their distance from GO in the game of Monopoly? Games with dice; puzzles; probabilities; and more.
In the board game, Monopoly, does a property’s distance from GO correlate to its rent when you land on it? Using Brian’s spread sheet (list of properties, distance from GO, rent and rent with properties), students create scatter plots. They…
What was the going tooth rate in your house? Do you think that, on average, you were paid well or were you disappointed? Was your first tooth lost especially remunerative? Look at historical averages and check out how you did.