We had a great time presenting to the Fab Educators Summit. Quan Nguyen and I presented a workshop session included five math making projects as well as some examples of ways fab labs can support math teachers and students in schools, libraries and maker spaces. See the slides here. If you or your organization would like to know more about
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This one is easy fun and somehow a little bit magical. Makes a great little math gift. The challenge is to make rectangles with pieces #1-5, #1-6, #1-7, and #1-8 (as below) Details, Instructions and Template Here. Here are the “versions” in a short video. These pieces are made in relation to eachother so there are many versions
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Interns Saurav Gandhi and Anh Nguyen co-presented the “Making and Math” session at the FAB16 Conference. They presented several of the math models we have constructed over the years including Koch Fractals, Mini Unit Circles, and Curve Stitching. Participants were shown how they can get creative with topics in Math by participating in making a Fractal Collage (see image gallery
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MoMath has posted the Rosenthal Prize Lessons! Check out ours called Building a Tool to Deepen Understanding here. It has lots of great photos. We are very excited to present this activity as part of our presentation at Connected Learning Summit. It has potential for a lot of great Maker elements. You can start from scratch with two dots 2″
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After talking with Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, we began searching for new ideas to interact with Voronoi Diagrams. During our pre-pandemic presentations and events we allowed people to interact with a Voronoi simulation that had been posted on Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Voronoi_growth_euclidean.gif While brainstorming we decided to buy a flipbook kit and test out what we could do with them. One of our
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We were inspired by a post on Twitter by Olivier Longuet shown below. The object in the photo is an icosahedron, a 20-sided 3D shape, made out of three golden rectangles with side lengths that obey the golden ratio (1:1.618033…). To make a cardboard version of the icosahedron, print out this document and follow the instructions! You can also make
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This is a great example where mathematicians applied some creative thinking to solve a very real world problem. It is Abraham Wald’s Survivorship Bias problem. To help explain the sequence of concepts that lead to his insight, we made some wooden planes to help visualize the problem, and the solution. We start out thinking about the planes that come back
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This is a fantastic way to layout this problem posted on twitter by Olivier Longuet and pointed out to me by Ralph Pantozzi. The drawing progression is on the right or you can etch the left (blank) onto wood, and add the finished pieces as you figure it out. Our files are here if you want a jpg, svg, Corel
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You don’t need robots and computers, just a system and apparatus to organize the steps! This model is based on the results alluded too but not completely explained by an Israeli company in the recent NY Times article by David Halbfinger on creative pool testing options. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/21/health/fast-coronavirus-testing-israel.html Trying to come up with one of these is a great activity for
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