Passover will begin this year at sundown on Saturday, March 27th. Jewish families will gather to commemorate the exodus of the Children of Israel from slavery in Egypt. The celebration begins with a traditional meal, the Seder, where the story of…
The date of the Presidential Inauguration this year can be written in an interesting way. What do you notice? What do you wonder? Do you think that this happens often in a year?
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.
What is this holiday about? Are we celebrating the start of school? New cars? The end of summer? In this short activity, students learn about the intended meaning of Labor Day as they read about its origin. For the mathematical…
Thank you Mother and Father for all of those diapers – Which is a better deal, cloth or disposable diapers? How much did you cost your parents in diapers? In the future how much could your kid’s diapers cost? Help…
Clock math, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,1,2,3,4,5,6,7… is modular math. Let your students learn about the usefulness of modular math as they color and explore Pascal’s Triangle. Very pretty math!
We’re still learning about the coronavirus and its ability to and tendencies toward infection and spread. Students learn about the R-naught number which is a measure of infectious growth. Real-world mathematics!
In this very short activity, students get a memorable way to visualize a zero slope and an undefined slope.
As the Halloween season begins, let your students play a spooky game. How does this work? Students can play this game online at Ghost Whisperer Crystal Ball and then Figure out why it works. Construct viable arguments Critique the work of others…
What’s the big deal with our deficit? Do we actually borrow money to cover our debt? If we do, imagine the interest charges? Help your students (and their families) understand the meaning and repercussions…
The building of this underground house and pool was presented by Cayote Person and his partner, Mark Lavins, on their youtube channel, “Brave Wilderness.” At BraveWilderness.com the business partners post animal and adventure films to promote education and conservation. Here…
In the midst of another NFL season, we introduce students to Fantasy Football. Students first calculate football points given touchdowns, yardage gains and interceptions. They are then challenged to generalize an equation that gives a player’s total fantasy points. Students solve…
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…
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
What does this gizmo do? We’ve given students a diagram of what the interior of this mechanism contains and asked them to try to decide what its purpose must be. Then we’ve given them the data that was collected from…