Bubble Tiles were inspired by a textile pattern in a book by the Japanese artist Hokusai. Find a link to his book on this info sheet. The idea is that a circle can be made of 6 60 degree arcs. Each arc can be inverted, or not and all the possible combinations make a tileset that has 13, or 14
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Let’s Make Math!
12 Projects & Endless Hours of Creative, Math-tastic Fun! Check it out. This book was imagined and realized by MathHappens interns Saurav Gandhi and Megan Do. It contains 12 of our favorite topics, beautiful graphics and ideas. We feel really confident it can be a resource for offering math activities in a variety of settings. We are pleased to have
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Laser Highlight: Achieve Rastered Lines Using Vector Mode
Jordan Varat is our Laser Operator and Instructor at MathHappens and works with our laser to achieve maximum quality and efficiency of our prints! Here she writes about a technique she uses to create our butterfly puzzle. Our Marjorie Rice Tessellating Pentagons #9 Butterfly Puzzle is one of our more popular puzzles right now, and it also utilizes a wonderful
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AAAS-PD Conference at University of San Diego
The American Association for the Advancement of Science – Pacific Division is a conference we’ve been interested in for several years. In 2024, our colleague Joan Horvath, who we’ve worked with at MakerFaire Los Angeles and other events invited us to participate in her session. Matt Hertel created a presentation to share the math room concept, where we are today
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Pflugerville Maker Pfest 2024
Maker Pfest was a Success! “I just wanted to thank your group for hosting a booth at this year’s Maker Pfest. They were so friendly and professional with everyone stopped by, and I know they were kept busy the whole time. All the kids who stopped by looked like they were having a bunch of fun. If you all would
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MathHappens collaboration @ The Atlanta Science Festival
Our partners for the booth were Geometiles and its founder Yana Mohanty who brought an amazing Olympic ring Geometiles sculpture and Professor Jason Harron of Kennesaw State University who made Pythagorean Theorem models and also brought an undergraduate with her Galton Board model. Lauren Siegel and Jordan Varat came for MathHappens with a variety of models, Infinity gum and other
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Take and Make: T-Puzzles
The T-Puzzle is a very old puzzle and it comes in several versions. In the version we made, the width and height are the same. Jordan Varat cut a board with silhouettes as puzzles that we will send to our math rooms in Austin, Mankato and Albuquerque. Megan Do worked on the CAD files and created the printable silhouettes
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Knots for Everyone! Math Teachers Circle of Austin visit Pearl St.
We welcomed the Math Teacher’s Circle of Austin to our Austin location and workshop on Pearl Street Thursday September 28th. They brought the food (BBQ) and we brought knots, and knot tiles. The visit included a workshop tour that included 3d printing, laser cutting pythagorean dissections and more. Thanks to Megan Do who designed the knot tiles, Ella Basken who
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Make Education Forum 2023 Presentation: Avoiding scorch using two sided laser cutting.
The first 3 puzzle pieces are cut from one side using the low speed and a high power needed to cut through 1/4″ plywood. The black scorch has to be sanded or wiped away adding significantly to post laser treatments. One approach if your laser is not cutting through is to run a second pass. This results in more
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Houston Science Festival: Mathematical Origami
On September 10, Jordan Varat and Stefany Espinoza hosted a table at the Houston Science Festival , an event co-sponsored by Bridges to Science that has the tag line “Casa to College”, because it is a celebration of Hispanic culture and learning at home designed for home educated 5th-12th grade students and their parents. We are really pleased to contribute
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