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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The idea for MathHappens to work with tessellating pentagons originated from intern Jason Gorst’s suggestions for future projects on his final report. A tessellation describes an arrangement of shapes that tiles a plane with no gaps or overlaps.The challenge of finding all possible tessellating pentagons was issued in 1900 by David Hilbert at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Paris
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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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In this photo Ximena Mercado Garcia has items from each Museum Day math station on the table to share with Univision and their viewers. Las matemáticas también pueden ser divertidas. ¡Únete y descúbrelo tu mismo! Sarah Bacca is sending this note with all the details to teachers, principals and schools. We hope everyone gets the word! Dear Math Enthusiasts,
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Visitors today created a butterfly puzzle that can stay at the ANSC. Each one made a butterfly piece and together they are a tribute to famous mathematician Marjorie Rice’s work on the tessellating pentagon problem. Its a great way to end our summer series! See you next summer!
Visitors learn about the Fibonacci Sequence (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8…) and how it relates to bee genetics. The visitors center has an actual beehive in the entryway. Visitors could color in their own bee. The bee family tree is etched on the back.
MathHappens is excited to announce that there will be math at the Austin Nature and Science Center every Saturday for Summer 2019 from 10 am to 2pm in the Visitor Center! Favorite Quote: “Kids, if you don’t finish at the math table soon you are going to miss out on the water park.”
We are pleased to hear that the materials we made for the North Carolina’s Mecklenberg Department of Parks and Recreation have arrived safely. We customized our caliper display with a North Carolina Crayfish, provided a set of Golden Ratio proportional calipers, Giant Calipers, the arm measure, zebra, ant, Golden Ratio mirrors with signage, and 1:1 and 1:2 calipers. We are
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What we learned: Mecklenburg County Environmental Education Manager Alice Chambers liked the materials she saw on a visit with colleagues at the Austin Nature and Science Center. She and her staff are interested in presenting mathematics concepts as part of their new STEM initiative. They would like to offer more and they are interested in collaborating with us by testing
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