Skills: Geometry, polygons, measurement …. and creativity.
Levels: Junior School & Middle School
In this activity students will create their own, preferably life-sized cardboard igloo. Igloo structures can be complicated or simple and in this project students must design and then build an igloo using a standard hexagon. Here are some inspiring designs.
The first igloo was built using computer generated constructive geometry. It uses a basic – but distorted – hexagonal cardboard unit and was built by by the students of the Faculty of Architecture, University of Porto. You can see the construction method below. More info here.
The next cardboard igloo is based entirely on circles. It was designed by students of ETH Zurich in Switzerland. More info here.
The following cardboard igloo based on triangles looks simple but has a very strong construction. More info here.
But the Granddaddy of the geometric or geodesic dome was Buckminster Fuller, who has been honoured by having a carbon-based nano-molecule named after him. They’re called Bucky Balls. If you look at the geodesic dome below you can see the HEXAGONAL PATTERN also visible int he Bucky Balls.
Skills: Geometry, measurement, polyhedrons, symmetry and creativity
Year Level: Year 7-9
Ask students to design and make a GEOMTRIC FASHION STATEMENT. This could involve a dress, hat or hair. Then they stage run a MATHS FASHION parade. The point is the fashion statement must involve specific maths such as geometry or trigonometry, calculus, quadratic equations … any maths you like.
Here from Lancia Trend Visions is the work of Amila Hrustic, a fashion design student in Sarajevo. These samples come from her “Plato’s Collection” inspired by the idea of Platonic solids. Her collection includes dress based on tetrahedrons, cubes, octahedrons, dodecahedrons, icosahedrons.
Ask a student to write down two 5-digit numbers. You rapidly write a 5-digit number underneath.
Ask another student to write another 5-digit number. You write another 5-digit number quickly.
Stand back.
And instantly write the answer.
Example:
N1 = 97413
N2 = 28619
N3 = 71380 (Each digit in N3 must add up to 9 with digits above)
N4 = 64231
N5 = 35768 (Each digit in N5 must add up to 9 with digits above)
Now you will instantly write down the sum of these five numbers as
297411
Da! DA!
The trick is to subtract 2 from N1 and put it in front:
N1 = 97413
N1 -2 = 97411
Sum of 5 numbers = 297411
Hint: Get as many students to add up the five 5-digit numbers on a calculator. You will beat them, but you will also need many answers as a number of students will key incorrect numbers.
Here is standupmaths comic Matt Parker doing calculations in his head including a bar code calculation.
Thanks to Matt making the barcode calculations look EASY Mathspig spent about 12 hours blowing steam out her ears and tearing up packaging trying to get the barcode maths to work.
This is THE absolute best exercise to test accuracy in simple calculations including transcribing numbers, which are so easily misread. It also shows you how BARCODES work.
The cash register pings if the BARCODE CHECK DIGIT Algorithm matches the CHECK DIGIT, which is the last digit in the barcode. This is how the cash register computer checks that the data in the barcode has been transferred correctly. All data transfers have some sort of data check algorithm.
The PING is KING!!!!!!!!
Mathspigs, you can check your maths skills by picking up the nearest product with a 13-digit barcode and calculating the CHECK DIGIT. The answer is at the end of the barcode.
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How heavy is $500,000 dollars?
This is mental maths, but not hard maths. You can play this video by 
