Thursday June 13, 2019. Enthusiasm for these fractal parts is amazing. Something about the stages of the Koch Fractal inspires interest, excites the mind and inspires creativity.
Saturdays with MathHappens @ Austin Nature and Science Center
Ben Duong presenting Curve Stitching! Straight lines make parabolas and conics! Favorite Quote: “I have to buy this! All three of my grandkids are totally quiet.”
Nature Nights at the Wildflower Center: Bee Genetics
Paola headed to Nature Nights to present math connections to Bee Genetics. Drones have one parent: a Queen, and Queens have two: a Drone and a Queen. When we make the family tree….SURPRISE! Fibonacci Numbers! Participants made their own Bee, tessellated butterflies and used the model to see how the bee genetics relates to Fibonacci’s rabbit problem.
MathHappens @ MakerFaire Bay Area 2019
What ages? All We brought 50 lbs of wood math activities to MakerFaire Bay Area and we brought home about 3lbs of unused materials. We really enjoyed the enthusiasm! Many thanks to UTeach Austin Makers Mao Leonard and Ben Duong and CalTeach Student Celeste Gonzalez as well as Berkeley Grad and MH Boardmember Alex Siegel.
TAG Field Trip Austin Nature and Science Center
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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What are tessellations?
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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Gunnery Quadrant for Cannons!
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/
Tessellations! Gilbert Elementary Science Day
Josephine Sheng, Paola Garcia and Cassandra Gonzalez at Science Day Tessellation puzzles are a great way to spend some time with some regular and irregular polygons and as a group make some beautiful puzzles. These are going to stay at Gilbert Elementary in the library. And we got a nice note from the principal: Thank you so much for sending
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MathHappens @ the Thinkery with Marjorie Rice Tessellating Pentagons
Favorite quote: “Oh my gosh! I can feel my brain working”. We had a great time at the Thinkery’s Community Spotlight: Women in STEAM. Thanks to Halle Herzog, Kyla Kalugden and Cassandra Gonzalez. We featured the irregular pentagon tilings and artistic butterfly stylings of Marjorie Rice. Marjorie Rice found 4 of the remaining 6 types that were still unidentified in
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Spiral of Theodorus – Relax with Math
Using an arts and crafts approach, we can teach a classic mathematics technique with low stress. We are providing the demonstration kit, a magnetic starter triangle and a simple straight edge (also magnetic) in sets of five as a door prize at this weekend’s Edcamp at Region 13, an UnConference for educators. We hope that the educators who win the kits
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