If you are a fan of museums, then you have seen something like this object before… probably dozens of times. This impressive artifact is a nocturnal from La Belle and it can be used to tell time at night by the positions of the stars. As historic artifacts and symbols of exploration and discovery, navigation tools like this one spark
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Elizabeth Lay, Claire Steffen and I had the opportunity to present a webinar through the Texas Historical Commission today. We discussed ways that museums can enhance visitor experiences with math, showed a variety of examples of math activities at museum locations and talked about our process in developing connected activities. Our Presentation Slides are here The Handout Recording Hosted by
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Nina and I met little people and big people, families and even a Boy Scout Troup on what turned out to be a math field trip from Houston. They designed with tiles, created polygons and pizzas with hinged mirrors, and explored fractal patterns at the magnet board and by drawing and designing. It was a great Saturday!
Have you seen it? MathHappens was happy to support a San Francisco Bay Area stop for Matheatre’s Calculus the Musical. Xiaojie Zhang teaches calculus at Skyline High School in Oakland, California. It was because of Ms. Zhang’s enthusiasm (and a few speedy emails to her principal’s office) that Matheatre could make Skyline High a special stop on their 2020 tour. More
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At the Showcase you can meet Elizabeth Lay, MathHappens’ Program Manager who is developing an innovative new unit. MathHappens has obtained an original manuscript written by Texas surveyor Robert Creuzbauer that details a dual system of land measurement standards unique to Texas. The new unit will connect Texas History and Mathematics curricula addressing TEKS for both math and history.
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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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Pioneer Farms is pioneering integrating math into their regular programming.
On Saturday, Mardi Nott presented about math field trips with MathHappens at the AACTM Winter Conference. AACTM stands for Austin Area Council of Teacher of Mathematics, which is affiliated with the National Council of Teacher of Mathematics (NCTM). Our presentation slides are available here. Mardi presented about field trips she has done to the Austin Nature and Science Center, Harry
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We had a great program and group of students at our latest field trip at the Austin Nature and Science Center. On this field trip we started with a whole group activity where we simulated a Voronoi diagram. Each new participant has to find a path that is equidistant from the nearest two others. Next time we’ll find some shoe
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We welcomed Miss Mardi back to the Bullock for a navigation field trip with another group of Austin High School students! Favorite Quote: “It was pretty cool learning about the history, which surprised me because I usually don’t like history” This field trip like others to the Bullock La Belle exhibit involved students “sailing” or carrying their ship to ports
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