1. Middle School Madness: BIG MATHS

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Community Maths can involve the school community or the wider, local community. The aim is to get maths out of the classroom and make it a hands-on experience.

Set up displays, posters, demonstrations or art/maths projects in your school library, gym or school yard or take some interesting maths to the local library, strip mall, town hall, local gardens or shopping mall. It will mean planning the project, collecting the materials and making a phone call to  the local, say, librarian, but libraries, for instance, welcome community involvement.

Here are just some community maths project ideas.

MATHS POSTERS

Major maths conferences around the world have poster displays. So why not a display of students maths posters in your school library or local library or even a nearby shopping mall. And students should be present at allocated times to explain their poster to other students, parents or members of the public.

Roosevelt Middle School students Jacob Klausner and Oliver Adelson WEST ORANGE, NJ, who were finalists heading to the National MathCon Competition.

Some of the best middle school maths posters can be found at MathsCareers, UK. Here are some posters from the 2016 competitions.

Winner 9 – 11 years Maths Poster Competition

Fatimah Patel Preston Girls High School

Runner Up 9 – 11 years Maths Poster Competition

Maja Kowalska McAuley Catholic High School

Winner 12-13 years Maths and Music Poster Competition

Laeticia Junanto Bancrofts School

 

MATHS DEMONSTRATIONS

Maths students can construct displays that involve interesting maths. The most amazing maths dispalys Mathspig has seen were at the 13e Salon Culture & Jeux  Mathematique in Paris. Here is LAGA Phd student Attouchi @ the 13e Salon Culture & Jeux  Mathematique in Paris.

She was showing students how to use a graph to create anamorphic projections. More detailed instructions here!!!

Palestinian Maths teacher Daina Taimina has many zany ideas. You’ll more Creative Maths ideas here.

Mentalist Maths … OK. This may include some Card Tricks … but they’re amazing. You’ll find 10 amazing Mentalist Math Tricks here.

Make some interesting cubes here.

Give students a variety of maths challenges they have to solve

like these Maths Mystery Box Challenges here.

Or let students explore some of the inspiring maths websites and pick a project. You will love the amazing German website IMAGINARY. It’s in English and has some fascinating videos!!!!!

Perhaps students could construct double pendulum like this one demonstrated at the MiMa-Museum, Oberwolfach, Germany. Mathspig can’t stop watching it. Fascinating!!!!!!! The double pendulum has some demanding trigonometry, but at the middle school level the 2D graph traced by the lower pendulum is fascinating enough (Below). And maths can provide equations for this movement. That’s impressive.

 

2. Middle School Madness: BIG MATHS

Mathspig just loves this Fluid Geometry Mural by artist Clint Fulkerson. Here is a Speed Clip of Flulkerson at the University of Maine Art Gallery 2012.

Mathspig  went crazy trying to produce her own Fluid Geometry Mural. These guys are artists. But your middle school maths class can use a simple method (See GIF below) and make a fab mural on a white/black board or down a school hallway. This is a great end of year/semester/pre-holidays project.

The reason for tackling such a project is to engage students, who are otherwise not interested in maths as well as do some whole school PR for maths. The mural WILL be noticed. And it makes maths look COOL.You will find more interesting Fluid Geometry works by Clint Fulkerson here.

3. Middle School Madness: BIG MATHS

Mathspig loves this ‘Street Art’ time lapse clip made by projective geometry students at the Technical University, Munich. 

SO … thought Mathspig … lets do it! Two days later Mathspig’s eyes nearly crossed trying to locate the Vanishing Point (below), which helps artists draw 3D images. It didn’t work due to the angle of elevation of the camera. 

SO .. rethink needed. (See project 1 & 2 below)

Maths Meets Street Art:

Project 1

Students can draw this ‘hole in the earth’ by Circle/Line Art School on paper fairly quickly. The aim here is to practice 3D street Art.

Maths Meets Street Art:

Project 2: The BIG ONE

Students can draw this ‘concrete hole’ by MiltonCor on paper using a ruler, set square and pencils. Then they have to scale it up to a size large enough for them to sit on the steps. The class can the ‘concrete hole’  in chalk in the school yard. Basic shading only is required, not the shading detail shown in this video.

Finally, students can take a photo of themselves sitting on the ‘steps’ with maths books beside them. 

Another MATHS SELFIE!!!!

5. Middle School Madness: BIG MATHS

Write your own maths song. 

Everyone is in it.

And film it.

Here are 2 hot to rock maths songs. The first song “Geometry is Killa-Hot”

 from the Ron Clark Academy even includes the lyrics.

You can do this. Make maths ROCK!

The second clip is from WSHA MATH. It is great too.

You will find Mathpig’s Math Song Lyrics here.

And Yes! I have had students singing this maths song

with great enthusiasm.

Parabolas and the Art of Spitting

The maths that proves that the 45 degree angle is the angle that produces the maximum distance travelled is quite tricky and involves trigonometry. But this just shows how cool maths can be. See the full calculations here.

More long bow maths here at ROBINHOOD GIVE US YOUR BEST SHOT. 

Interesting maths work on WHICH SPORT IS MORE DANGEROUS, BASEBALL OR CRICKET? here.

World Record Watermelon Seed Spitting Maths

Here are some worksheets on MEAN, MEDIAN and MODE for middle school students. It also involves work with units (Metric/USA). But these are real numbers and the distances that 14 year olds can spit watermelon seeds is amaaaazing!

You can find the free pdf worksheets  (included below) here.

Other fun middle school math(s) worksheets in the Hot Heels series at TpT include Unit Rates, Angles, Ratios and Algebra.

Ask volunteers to see how far they can spit a seed. (WARNING: The volunteer must breath in through their nose before they spit. You don’t want them inhaling a seed.)

ANSWER SHEETS

CGI and Middle School Maths … Metric units

1. Story Board Sketches

The Pixar film, Finding Dory, began as storyboard sketches. There were 103,000 drawn for the film. The sketches are placed side-by-side in sequence in order to convey scenes and deliver a rough sense of how the story unfolds.

How many 64-page Exercise books would the story board take?

Only one side of the page of the 64-page exercise book would be used for storyboarding.

No. exercise books = 102,000/32  =  3,187.5

If put into flip Book form the story board sketches would produce a ‘rough’ version of the film.

Superman Vs Goku

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2. Ratio

If you are making a film about, say, Godzilla, you want him to be big. VERY BIG. But he has to share a screen with human characters.

If Godzilla is too big all the humans look like ants.

If he is too small … he looks like a toy TRex.

The Monster Maths:

Height: 108.2m Godzilla’s towering height in the 2014 film—the tallest onscreen incarnation ever

Tail: 167.74m Total length of Godzilla’s spiked tail

Volume: 89,724 m³ Godzilla’s total volume in the 2014 film.

Volume: 90,000 tons Godzilla’s volume if filled with water

Teeth: 1.07m  Length from the root to the tips of Godzilla’s canine teeth

Teeth: 60 Teeth in Godzilla’s mouth

Roar: 4.83km Approximate distance Godzilla’s roar reverberates. (100,000W Power of the 3.7m-high, 5.5m-wide speaker array from which the sound designers blasted Godzilla’s roar to record the sound in a “real world” context)

Feet: 17.66m  Total width of Godzilla’s feet across the widest point

Feet: 18.18m Length of Godzilla’s footprint from toe to heel

You vs Godzilla

The average height for 14-year-old boys in the U.S. is 164 cm.

For 14-year-old girls in the U.S. the average height is 158.75 cm.

Godzilla = 108.2 m  

We’ll assume an average height of, say, 1.6m for a 14 yo.

14 yo =  1.6 m    

Height:

108.2/1.6 = 67.6 = 68     

Footprint

You vs Godzilla’s Footprint

18.18/160 =  11.4         

Teeth

You vs Godzilla’s Tooth

1.07/1.60 = 0.7                      

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3. 3D Modeling: Polygon Count

3D modeling can be approached in several ways. There is a good explanation here.

One method is to use a 3D scanner to produce a 3D mesh.

Godzilla model under construction

Digital Godzilla as 3D mesh

The mesh consists of polygons. You’ll find everything you want to know about polygons here.

The greater the no. of polygons the better the resolution in a 3D mesh, the better the  resolution of the character or object as more shading and texture variation can be added.

So the POLYGON COUNT or POLY COUNT is a measure of the quality of an image.

Here are some POLY COUNTS:

Godzilla

500,000 polygons.

It took the 4 CGI artists 6 months to fully nail the texture of Godzilla’s scales. (See above)

Elysium

Just the space station ran close to 3 trillion polygons.

Transformers 2

Devastator had 13 million polygons

Clash of the Titans

The Kraken had 7 million Polygons.

Avatar

Apart from some bluescreen shots of live-action actors in cockpits, it’s all CG: gunships, missiles, smoke trails, water, fire, an army of photorealistic virtual characters and a giant tree made of 20 million polygons with 1.2 million leaves.

More here.

Lord of the Rings – The Two Towers (2002)

(See below)

The Gollum head model consisted of just over 2,600 polygons, which were mostly quads.

More here.

Film Animation vs Game Animation

The POLY COUNT is always greater in animated movies than in video games mainly because a higher poly count takes longer and costs more. A higher resolution is needed in a movie as it is shown on a much bigger screen.

Gollum: Game vs Film 3D model

Here are some POLY COUNTS for some popular games:

The Amazing Spiderman

Spiderman – 11,652

Assassin’s Creed 3

Benjamin Franklin – 17,744

Charles Lee – 25,994

Connor Kenway – 28,501

Desmond – 14,934

Haytham Kenya – 19,985

Batman: Arkham City

Batman: Film Version

Batman: Game Model

Batman Beyond suit – 13,050

Harley Quinn – 17,731

Harley Quinn (DLC) – 19,110

Poison Ivy – 15,977

Call of Duty: Black Ops

Frank Woods (full gear) – 19,777

Crysis 2 (console)

Nano suit – 19,073

Multiplayer suit – 27,414

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FREE 3D MODELING FOR MIDDLESCHOOL STUDENTS

TINKERCAD is the free online resource that allows students to create their own 3D graphs – like Godzilla vs You (above) or 3D images that can be used for 3D printing. Play with the program. Mathspig had a little play and produced the genetically challenged chicken (below).

Tinkercad Dashboard

Find here.

Drag and drop shapes.

More here.

Play with shape dimensions.

More here.

Create figures for 3D printer.

MATHSPIG REPORT CARD: More playing with program needed!!!