New York Times Learning Network: Symmetry and Soccer Balls

My latest contribution to the New York Times Learning Network’s 15-Minute Lesson Plan series was inspired by Siobhan Roberts’s wonderful article on the geometry of the soccer ball.

Math is all around us, from the motion of the planets above to the movement of bits and bytes through the internet. And as this article from The Times shows, there’s even math at the tips of our toes.

Here’s the author, Siobhan Roberts, on the mathematically marvelous soccer ball:

Given its patchwork construction and graphic patterns, a soccer ball can have two types of symmetry: reflection symmetry and rotation symmetry. Reflection symmetry means what it sounds like: that the object “has two identical halves that are mirror images of each other,” in Dr. Schattschneider’s words. Rotation symmetry means an object looks exactly the same as its starting position after a rotation of less than 360 degrees.

The Learning Network article is freely available here and grants free access to all of the linked Times articles as well.

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