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…
The longest day
Tag: 8.EE
Prince Harry and Meghan Markel’s Royal Wedding
This weekend is the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markel. This will be quite an event and we can expect it to dominate the media. What have you heard about the event? What interests you? The mathematics in this…
What me? Irrational?
We’ve found that some students believe that the approximation that their calculators show for irrational numbers is exact. Here’s an activity that you can advertise as long multiplication review. After they study our calculations have a discussion just to clarify…
Want to earn $150,000? – Mersenne prime search
What’s a Mersenne prime? How hard could it be to find the next one? Why are there only 50 known Mersenne primes? What’s with $150,000? The activity: NewMersennePrime.pdf
Spiraling triples
Let students explore the patterns of perfect squares and Pythagorean Triples as they analyze our piece of art and decide why the resulting construction looks like spiraling squares. For a finale they color their own spiraling triple. The activity: SpiralingTriples-activity.pdf
Have you seen more monarch butterflies lately?
In mid-August and early September, the Monarch butterflies begin their annual migration south to more moderate climates to hibernate and overwinter. It is an incredibly long migration and fascinating to observe. But, the populations data on Monarchs has seriously changed…
Fun and crazy things to do for April Fools day
We have two classic puzzles for your April 1st class starters. PerplexingOne.pdf PerplexingTwo.pdf CCSS: MP.1, MP3,4.OA, 5.G, 8.EE, 8.SP For members we have solutions. PerplexingOne-solution.pdf PerplexingTwo-solution.pdf Or you might baffle and amaze your students with our Ghost Whisperer lesson.…
How did I graph this heart?
Electoral College vs the Popular vote
Click the map to create your own at 270toWin.com Let your students see how votes really count with our activity on the Electoral College. Can someone win the popular vote in the Presidential election and still not become President of…
10 Million nematodes
Grubs are killing my grass. I don’t want to put poison into the ground. What can I do? There are tiny roundworms called beneficial nematodes. They can kill destructive soil pests in your garden and lawn. They are tiny worms that…
MAVEN arrives at Mars
Recently the MAVEN spacecraft (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission) that was launched on November 18, 2013 reached Mars and attained an elongated orbit around the planet. How does someone figure out how to do that?
Voyager on the edge
The two Voyager space probes are in the news recently as they approach the edge of our solar system. Scientist can tell that the Voyager’s environments are changing. They are receiving more high-energy particles streaming
Happy 14th B’ak’tun!
Clicking on this map of the Mayan territories will open it larger and in a new window Luckily, we’ve passed 12/21/2012 and the world is still here and we’ve made it into the start of the next Mayan calendar cycle…
Two to the … s
Let your students practice exponents, fractional exponents, and roots with this powerful assignment that asks them to compute impressive mathematics in their heads. If you list the values of various 2 to the … s then you can ask students…