My students were recently making fun of some of the math problems on the PSAT. Apparently, one of the questions went something like this:
After having a bit of a laugh about it, we decided to try to help the PSAT exam writers make a more interesting question. Here is our revision:
Creating this new question was far more interesting than solving the original! And thanks to Wolfram|Alpha, we can easily check the answer.
This is an amazing resource: a collection of science demonstrations from Harvard Natural Sciences Lecture Demonstration Services.
https://sciencedemonstrations.fas.harvard.edu/catalog
There are hundreds of demonstrations in the archive. Each entry includes an in-depth description of the scientific principle(s) on display in the demonstration, as well as detailed instructions on how to execute the demo.
Topics include Newtonian Mechanics, Light and Optics, and Thermal Physics. There is also a collection of mathematical demonstrations, as well as a small set of videos.
And be sure to check out their Facebook page here: http://www.facebook.com/NatSciDemos
There are many reasons I personally love to write, and as a math teacher, I love getting my students writing about math.
One easy way to do this is to have students write math-themed haiku. It’s a simple exercise, it gets students thinking about math in a different way, and the elegance and efficiency of the style is reminiscent of mathematics itself!
So enjoy some math-themed haiku from my Calculus students.
| Solving math problems
Getting lost along the way. You’re on the right track. |
Mathematicians
Must always seek out patterns To make connections. |
| Limit of a curve.
Tangent at infinity. Straight line asymptote. |
Triangles are shapes
They have sharp, pointy edges Don’t let them poke you. |
Got a good math haiku? Let’s hear it!
Related Posts
This is a collection of free online college courses from the Indian Institute of Technology — Delhi.
http://nptel.iitm.ac.in/courses.php
There are a wide range science and technology courses represented here: Electronics, Mechanics, Information Systems, as well as several Mathematics courses.
There is a mixed-bag of resources available here: many of the Basic Courses have a full curriculum of lecture videos, while some of the more advanced courses currently offer only on-line syllabi.
Another nice resource for students and teachers!
My latest contribution to the New York Times Learning Network is a math lesson built around gathering, representing, and analyzing economic indicator data.
By getting data on Real G.D.P., personal income, corporate profits, and unemployment from official sources like the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the U.S. Department of Labor, students explore positive and negative correlations between the various economic indicators.
In addition, students can explore the relationships between graphs of quantities and their rates of change by creating and comparing graphs of percent change.