As the weather improves – Spring in Melbourne, my city & Fall in USA & Autumn in the UK – it is an ideal time to take math outdoors. Here are some fab exercises for Middle School Math.
Lego Man soccer fields will vary in size depending on the height of each player picked by each student. This does your head in. It is really challenging maths!
You’ll find full calculations at the Maths is Fun blog.
You’ll find more fab outdoor junior and middle school maths activities at the terrific Maths and Movement blog.
Some students will discover their co-ordinate point is not on the grid. Students should then work out that they will need a different scale for the y-axis. You can get more inspiration at the Stand Again blog.
Of course, in heavy traffic you are burning up the bio-fuel/fat getting nowhere.
Fuel Consumption (F) can plummet, even for the Mini, from 3.4 kg/ 100 km to 6.8 kg/100 km to 8.8 kg/100km. You may as well get out of the car and walk!!
This fab idea comes from Juliet Robertson, an outdoor education consultant in Scotland. Her blog Creative star learning is one of the most inspiring outdoor maths blogs you will find.
Lego Man soccer fields will vary in size depending on the height of each player picked by each student. This does your head in. It is really challenging maths!
You’ll find full calculations at the Maths is Fun blog.
You’ll find more fab outdoor junior and middle school maths activities at the terrific Maths and Movement blog.
Some students will discover their co-ordinate point is not on the grid. Students should then work out that they will need a different scale for the y-axis. You can get more inspiration at the Stand Again blog.
Get ready mathspigs. You need one Lego Man, Girl, Vampire or Alien each for this exercise. Now we are going to set out the Lego Olympics Athletics track.
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But this story of the Olympics begins with Carl Lewis, one of the greatest athletes of all time who won 9 Olympic Gold medals in 100m, 200m, relay and long jump.
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Carl Lewis
Mathspig needs to find out how big the Lego Olympics track would be. How? Easy.
Carl Lewis will be our standard Lego Man.
I chose Carl Lewis because he kindly gave me his autograph once when I sprinted in high heels across a ballroom floor at a sports dinner in Melbourne and beat all other journalists. It was my personal best in high heels, I think.
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This means everything at the Lego Olympics will be
1:50
of the real Olympics.
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The Lego Bird’s Nest Stadium @ Beijing will be 1/50th of the real Bird’s Nest Stadium. (Not the scale shown here). Pictures by Johor Bahru.
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The Lego Beijing Water Cube Swim Centre will be 1/50th of the Real Water Cube.
EXERCISE 1:
Now mathspiggies over to you. The first thing to do is calculate the Lego Olympic measurements (table below).
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EXERCISE 2:
Then mark out a Lego Olympics 100m sprint to scale and/or
draw a Lego Olympic track (in chalk, perhaps) and/or
step out a Lego Olympic marathon track and/or
make a pole vault pole to scale for your little Lego Man.
Or bring in a Lego Man/Girl/Pirate and step out the Marathon Track (840m to scale).
There is a lot of maths in Lego, mathspigs, but rather than smash up bridges not to mention toes with 40 kg weights, here are some other cool ways to do LEGO MATHS.
You can make yourself into a Lego Figure like Mathspig, but first ….
Ideally, students would measure their own Lego Man. Otherwise, use the dimensions shown and fill in the chart.
To calculate your Lego man conversion factor:
Lego Conversion Factor = Your Height mm/ Lego Man height mm
eg. Mathspig Height = 172 cm
Mathspig Lego Conversion = 1720/ 38.2 = 44.6
A full size Lego Mathspig is 172 cm, therefore a full sized lego Mathspigs legs would be:
Mathspig Lego Legs = 14.0 x 44.6 = 624.4 mm = 62.4 cm
Dimensions
mm
Lego Man Dimensions
mm
Your Real Dimensions
mm
Your Lego Man Dimension
mm
Height
(Not including the round thing
ie. the stub)
38.6
Head Height
Top to chin
8.5
************
Neck
1.2
*************
Torso
Shoulder to hip
(Swivel pt)
14.9
************
Leg Length
Hip to Floor
14.0
************
Now you could draw or photo shop a real picture of yourself to these dimensions or – this is so cool – just make a Lego Man Pic of yourself @ Reasonably Clever
Or search topics on Youtube eg. Introduction to Conics Khan
Why Does Mathspig like The Kahn Academy? Because it’s:
1. Free.
2. Quick
3. Clear
4. Low-key
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Salman gives digital chalk-and-talk tutes like a teacher. He hand draws the equations and graphs. He uses a calculator from time to time, but he tends not to use whizz bang spreadsheet graphs or perfectly presented textbook equations. It’s a bit wobbly and it’s all coming from Salman’s head.
And students like this approach. It makes maths look do-able.
The tutes on Maths Online are produced by Aussie Maths teachers and they are very good. Mathspig, of course, imagined the quadratic function tutes might look something like this:
Mathspig Blog 