If you have a set of cubes for your classroom, this would make a great group hands-on project. Its an old puzzle but the activity deserves a revisit. Below are two straight-on images of my stack of blocks. Can you…
Point of view
Tag: 6th
Who’s going back to school?
In this investigation students calculate the percentage of the U.S. population (current and historically) that are enrolled in K-12 schools. They are asked to draw conclusions from these variations. Finally, they use their calculations to predict the number of enrolled…
Perseid meteor shower
Catching a productive meteor shower can be a stunning experience. On the evenings and mornings of August 11th and 12th there could be a very good show. A nearly new moon will leave the night sky dark. Depending on the…
That’s a big tomato!
These Aussi tomatoes (the tomato on the left of all of the tomatoes) are huge. How much do you guess one weighs? Can you figure it out?
Only 10 cents for all-you-can-eat ice cream?
All the ice cream that you can eat for only 10 cents! Wow, that’s a great deal! How great a deal was that? The history of the Dairy Queen franchise began with this ad in Illinois in 1938. I know…
“Wild Boars” soccer team rescue – Incredible
Can you imagine being stuck in the dark for such a long time? How do all of the numbers play out? In this activity, students get a chance to talk about the experience of this ordeal while calculating usual rates…
Really big beach towel
Act One: Check out this beach towel! What do you wonder? What would you like to know? Miami artist, Misael Soto (pictured on the left below), created this giant art project to make a statement about people sharing territory at the beach.…
Now that LeBron James is becoming an L. A. Laker, will this company go broke?
Fanatics is an online sportswear retailer that has promised to accept jersey returns if your chosen player makes a team switch. In this activity student try to calculate how much this “Jersey Assurance” program will actually cost the company. This…
Encouraging bats might be better than using bug repellant
Bats eat mosquitoes … lots of mosquitoes. Students compare a bat’s weight to how much he can consume in one night. They calculate how much they would need to eat to consume a comparable proportion of food. We compare the…
World Cup draw
This is part II of our reflections on the World Cup games. Part I, World Cup rankings, explained and let students practice with the formula and weighting that is used to establish each country’s team rank. This second activity deals with…
Fibonacci coloring
Let your students simply enjoy coloring our designs or artistically play with the whole creation of Φ designs. Simply coloring our Fibonacci patterns might allow students to ponder the Fibonacci sequence (while they learn more about its beauty) and just…
World Cup rankings
In December soccer teams with the strongest world rankings were chosen to play in the once-every-4-years World Cup. The World Cup competition has just begun and will continue through July 15th. The team rankings are calculated in a pretty complex…
The longest day
On Thursday, June 21st, at 06:07 am EST, the Earth’s North Pole will be tilted as far towards the Sun as it will ever be in the year. This marks the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere and…
Impress your parents at dinner
This activity is the first in our series on mental math tricks. Let your students develop their own individual way of mentally multiplying by 0.5, 5, 50, 500, and so on. We have a little practice and a requirement for…
Will Damarious Randall have to pay big?
Warriors won the NBA Championships. Randall won’t have to buy jerseys! The Cleveland Brown’s safety player, Damarious Randall, posted this tweet. Its been very popular and retweeted a lot. How much might he have to fork out for jerseys? Let’s…