This group surprised us! These 5th graders worked on a voronoi map, observed voronoi patterns in a microscope and on animals and participated in a lively discussion on cholera and epidemiology. When we got to the iPad demo of circles colliding one young man watching the patterns emerge from colliding circles said “this is so satisfying”. With overcast skies, we
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We had displays on Karen Uhlenbenk, Mary Boole, and Marjorie Rice. Some people wanted to see a Voronoi pattern in a dragonfly wing, others designed and colored Marjorie Rice’s Pentagon # 13 and others were fascinated by Mary Boole’s Curve Stitching.
What are tessellations? A repeating pattern of shapes that goes on forever without any gaps or overlaps. You can think of tiling a floor. Squares, triangles and hexagons are all shapes that tessellate. Mathematician Marjorie Rice discovered some very interesting polygons that tile. It is fun to color and move around all kinds of geometric shapes! See how these squares
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Finding the “M” in STEAM! Parents at Bird Rock Elementary in La Jolla, California partnered with MathHappens to include hands-on math and art activities as part of their STEAM Fest 2019. S.T.E.A.M. …Bird Rock Elementary has ALL the lettters! Tessellating polygons are fun to arrange in freehand tiling patterns or puzzling into wooden frames. You can find art in math…
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Pioneer Farms presented the Golden Ratio to visitors along with information about prairie animals. From Claire Steffen: I wanted to let you know that people really enjoyed learning about the golden ratio on Saturday. I had one woman remark– “I’m 42, how did I not know about this?” Another man was very interested and when we were done, went to
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If you ever wondered if families, adults, kids, teens would be interested in some math on a Saturday, this should answer your question. We brought Tessellations, and in particular some designed with Marjorie Rice’s discoveries and we also featured Lewis Carroll’s puzzles, tangrams and cipher codes. MH team: Kyla Kalugdan, Josephine Sheng and Lauren Siegel, and special thanks to our
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Mike Bailey of the Brazoria County Historical Museum provided us this photo. He is using our model Gunner’s Quadrant with a cannon there at the Museum. We based our model on the one seen above in an article on Nicholas Tartaglia, the inventor of ballistics. https://www.famousscientists.org/niccolo-tartaglia/
Theme: Get Outside! We did some survival math, sunlight tracking and compass rose designs. You can find a straight line from West to East if you track the shadow of a stick and mark its top over time. Then you can find North and South and relate that to a compass rose on a map and find your way.
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Michelle, Paola and Kyla headed out to the Buda Public Library Spring Fling April 14 to measure a special tree. Consensus says its 13 feet tall. Participants learned to use a quadrant and landscape measuring tape to set up their calculation. They also made plumb line necklaces. Thanks to the City of Buda and youth librarian Caitlin Foley!
