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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Genaille-Lucas Rulers are pretty cool. They are a clever calculator that you can use to multiply some pretty big numbers. MathHappens summer staff member Anh Nguyen made a colorful set from scratch in Corel Draw that you can download and print on a laser or inkjet printer. Feel free to copy, explore, and use. It’s a great project to try
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We have officially launched our new weekly program at the Austin Nature and Science Center! This program will go from 10am-2pm every Saturday so checkout our Facebook for more information. The room will have rotating puzzles and activities, a shelf full of books for various ages, and something you can make and take home with you! Don’t miss out because
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Viang Shah created his own Corel Draw file to make this design. You are invited to make your own design files or use his which are posted in Corel, AI and SVG formats.
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!
Nina Hunt, Elizabeth Wrightsman, and Josephine Sheng helped present one of our new activities at Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center’s Winter Tree Fest this past Saturday. Visitors had the opportunity to explore Pull-String 3D shapes (laser files are here). Here is a video of one of the shapes that visitors got to make to go with the Fortlandia exhibit that was at
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One person can make a real difference by bringing math into a family event at the Nature Center. Emmie Chng was working solo with an enthusiastic gathering of families. They learned how to make a plumbline, how to use a quadrant, how to make one at home and why we look to the north star to find latitude. Here’s the
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MathHappens Interns Josephine Sheng and Viyang Shah had the opportunity to try out an activity on Freese’s Dissections at The Thinkery’s Educator Night on October 17th, 2019. They had a great time interacting with educators in the Austin area and demonstrate to them how math can be approachable and fun. Some even said they’d leave their personalized puzzles at their
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Stick Stock (Surveyors in Texas before Annexation to the U.S.), ca. 1845, oil on canvas, 14in. x 17 in. framed, Lent by Larry Sheerin, L.2012.2.3 MathHappens is sharing ways that a mathematical device, the survey Chain measurement system invented by Edmund Gunter in the 1600s impacted Texas history as we transitioned- only sort of — from the Mexican Vara
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We had an amazing time at Austin Nature and Science Center! Photo Gallery to come! At ANSC, we shared with the public ways to understand math through art. We brought out our tessellating pentagons and regular shapes (squares, rectangles, etc.) and invited the public to go through the history that brought us to the 15 irregular tessellating pentagons that we
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