MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig …………………………………………………. with Kerry Cue

Hellooo Mathspigs,…………………………………………………..

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This week it is fun, fun, fun time with maths.

Yes, mathspiggies you are about to adventure into:

The Great Maths Scavenger Hunt.

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This is ideal for Middle School maths students. The Great Maths Scavenger Hunt is not just about fun. There is a secret agenda. Ooooooh, Yes! We want to show those mathspiggies in year 7, 8 and 9 that maths is used everywhere. So we are sending them on a Mission Not-So-Impossible to look at some odd places maths pops up.

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The inspiration for the Scavenger Hunt came from The University of Chicago. In the 1970s the unofficial war cry of its football team was:

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Cosine, secant, tangent, sine

Three point one four one five nine

Square root, cube root, BTU,

Sequence, series, limits too. Rah!

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Today the University of Chicago has 4 days of mayhem known as Scav, the Scavenger Hunt. (See The New Yorker, The Hunter Games, Patricia Marx, 2 Jul 2012.) There are up to 120 teams. All with names. Challenges include anything from finding a Hula Hoop (10 points) to delivering your appendix in a jar (34 pts) to eating your own umbilical cord (one student did. His mum had kept it. Ergh!) to getting a potato to break the sound barrier.

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In 1999 one challenge was to build a working nuclear breeder reactor (500 pts). A very worried Nuclear Physicist confirmed that two students had built the device using converted Thorium powder from inside vacuum tubes as weapon-grade Uranium!!!

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Ooooh! Argh! We won’t get sooooo carried away mathspiggies. But the challenge is on.

So GAME ON, you Scavs.

See what maths mayhem you can conjure into the universe.

May the most ingenious mathspiggy win.

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Mathspig

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