Preparing a Sunday brunch, I unconsciously turn bacon into tangrams.
There are a lot of trapezoids among these bac-o-grams!
Appreciation Geometry Uncategorized
Dodecahedron Calendar
Here’s a fun use for a dodecahedron: folding it up to make a yearly calendar!
https://texample.net/tikz/examples/foldable-dodecahedron-with-calendar/
Just download the PDF, print, cut, fold, and glue! Access to a large-scale plotter might be nice, as the 8.5 x 11 version folds into something that’s pretty small.
It’s too bad there aren’t eight days in a week, otherwise we could put the octahedron to use, too!
Uncategorized
Math Research Projects
This is a terrific collection of Math Research projects designed to engage middle school, high school, and undergraduate students in independent mathematical research:
http://www.york.cuny.edu/~wu/jm/
The projects cover topics like graph coloring, triangulation, nets, and voting matrices. Each project contains background information, examples, a fundamental problem, and extensions.
Although many of the questions (and answers) may be known, the projects mostly explore areas of mathematics that are not as well-traveled as Number Theory or Euclidean Geometry. Students who engage with this material may very well find themselves looking at something new, or in a new way.
Uncategorized
MIT OpenCourseWare
One of the true marvels of the internet-age, MIT’s OpenCourseWare project makes video lectures, notes, problem sets, and exams from over 2,000 MIT courses freely available to anyone with an internet connection.
Naturally, MIT’s OCW project offers courses in technical fields like Mathematics, Engineering, Chemistry, and Computer Science. But many humanities courses, in subjects such as Literature, Foreign Language, and Music, are also available. You can browse all of the courses here: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/.
The Multivariable Calculus course has been especially helpful for me. Not only can I brush up on techniques in vector calculus, but by watching the lectures I get a different teaching perspective on the material. Browsing the problem sets and tests gives me ideas for my own assignments and assessments. And, naturally, it’s a wonderful resource for the students!
I’ve also enjoyed making my way through some of the advanced statistics and physics courses MIT has to offer. As a teacher, it’s always nice to remind yourself how lost one can be as a student!