We love a special event at MathHappens. We do several dozen per year through our local partnerships as well as with distant organizations. 

An example of an event type we do is running our usual math room programming on a special day. This year, we spent Presidents Day at The Works Museum in Bloomington, MN. Our math room there is normally open on the first and third Saturdays, but Presidents Day is historically a very busy day at The Works so they invited us to play along.

This young engineer was excited to have the opportunity to experiment with our gears. She removed them one at a time, stacking them neatly, and then replaced one or two at a time in order to test the workings of various combinations.

Our Block-by-Block, Jr. sets (designed by Scott Kim) got a great workout. We have several new puzzle challenges, including The Salute and The Popsicle (below…can you tell which is which?)

We caught on camera a moment that results from a design decision we made long ago—having table-size and extra-large sets of these blocks in the same space.

The child in the background spent several minutes building the tower in the foreground. One of us asked him, “If you built that tower out of those big blocks, would it be taller than you?” Away he went to build the same tower at a new scale in order to find out.

Do you have an event you’d like to partner on? Let’s see if we can make some math happen!