It’s been nearly two weeks since the blog carnival website sent me any articles for the MTaP carnival. If you tried to submit a entry for the carnival this week or last, I probably didn’t get it. Feel free to email me directly!
In the meantime, I’ve combed Google Reader and collected a nice assortment of posts for this week’s Math Teachers at Play — but there is still room for more.
Wow! And to think, I was proud of myself for finishing a crochet afghan. Once.
Chain several. Leave straight to work in rows, or connect into a loop. Single crochet until your patience runs out, increasing every nth stitch (add an extra sc in the same place). Experiment with different colors and patterns. This pdf will give you more ideas.
The more frequently you increase, the frillier your hyperbolic plane will be, while a less-frequent increase makes it easier for students to see the structure. Daina Taimina recommends a 12:13 ratio (increase after every 12th stitch) for classroom use.
Hat tip: 2010 MAA Found Math Gallery, Week 45, and authentic arts by jenny hoople for the pdf.
Welcome to the May 20, 2011 edition of Math Teachers at Play. Before beginning the carnival, let us have some interesting facts about 38.
- The sum of the squares first three primes
- The number of years it took the Israelites to travel from Kadesh Barnea to the Zered valley in Deuteronomy
- There number of surviving plays written by William Shakespeare
- The atomic number of strontium
- Thirty seven and 38 are the first pair of consecutive positive integers not divisible by any of their digits.
Now, let the carnival begin!
The new Math Teachers at Play blog carnival is ready for your browsing pleasure:
Welcome to the 37th edition of the Math Teachers at Play blog carnival. I’m delighted to host the carnival here this month at Maths Insider!
For those new to the Math Teachers at Play carnival, this carnival celebrates some of the best maths teaching articles written by teachers, parents and bloggers each month. …
In keeping with tradition, I’ve presented a “37″ puzzle and some interesting arithmetic facts about the number 37 below. …
With news reports of radiation from Japan being found from California to Massachusetts — and now even in milk — math teachers need to help our students put it all in perspective.
xkcd to the rescue!
Pajamas Media offers a brief history of radiation, plus an analysis of our exposure in Banana Equivalent Doses:
And the EPA offers a FAQ:
[T]he levels being seen now are 25 times below the level that would be of concern even for infants, pregnant women or breastfeeding women, who are the most sensitive to radiation… At this time, there is no need to take extra precautions… Iodine-131 disappears relatively quickly in the environment.
— Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
pages 4-5 of EPA FAQ
[Hat tip: Why Homeschool.]
36 has long been one of my favorite numbers, but faced with this carnival, it was hard to figure out why. It’s a square number that’s a product of two squares, but that’s not too rare. (Why?) It’s the 6th perfect square and the sum of the first six odds, but that’s not too remarkable. (Why?) It’s the 8th triangular number, but not a Sierpinski step or anything… wait! It’s a square triangular number? How common is that? 1, 36, then…?
In the process of updating old book links (and otherwise cleaning up old posts), I’ve been spending more time than normal at the bookstore. I just noticed that Raymond Smullyan’s What Is the Name of This Book? is scheduled to come out this August — and it’s already available for pre-order. WooHoo!
Can To Mock a Mockingbird be far behind? Oh, and Alice in Puzzleland — I want that one, too!
I’ve been working on a book of math games for homeschoolers and other teachers. I hope to get it published later this year, but the editing drags on. Would anybody like to draw the illustrations?
Meanwhile, here’s a 2-player game your students may enjoy…
Print out a blank times table chart and place it between the players. Each player will need a colored marker, and the colors must be different enough to be easily distinguished.
Remove the jokers and kings from a deck of poker-style playing cards, but leave the jacks (= 11) and queens (= 12). Shuffle the deck, and place the stack face down as a draw pile.
A bit of number fun to start your week off right:
And speaking of those “scary” numbers out in the forest… Monday is Pi Day!
Have some irrational fun with these posts:
[Hat tip: Julie mentioned this video on the Living Math Forum.]
Seen at kitchen table math, the sequel:
I can recall the deep satisfaction I felt on the all-too-rare occasions at school when the concepts or formulas fell into place. It seemed an entirely different discipline from writing, where something arises from a blank page through a combination of hard work and patience, with a sliver of creativity.
With math, the experience is more like discovering something that’s always existed and finally decided to stop playing hard-to-get.
Denise Gaskins' Let's Play Math 