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.

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Mean, Median and Coffee: Busting an Urban Myth

 

A Fun Maths Exercise.

Students count steps.

No units of length used. 

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

Other fun middle school math(s) worksheets in the Hot Heels series at TpT include

Unit Rates, Angles, Ratios and Algebra.

There is a lot of maths and science behind coffee sloshing in a coffee mug. ‘The human stride has almost exactly the right frequency to drive the natural oscillations of coffee’ explains fluid physicists at the University of California at Santa Barbara. You will find their full explanation here.

 

10 CRAZY CREATIVE MATHS BLOGS

Background pattern found here.

1.

Botanica Mathematica is a Mathematical knitting blog  with patterns included run by Dr Julia Collins and Haggis the Sheep.

 

 2.

 

 The Mathematician’s Shirts! is a creative maths blog run by Julia Collins and Madeleine Shepherd. Yes! The same Julia Collins as above. It is a small collection of shirts but Big on imagination and this project is something middle school students could tackle using an old shirt. More on Flikr here.

 

 

 3.

The Division by Zero blog is very mathsy. Seriously mathsy. It is run by David Richeson, Professor of Mathematics at Dickinson College. Even though it involves tertiary level maths it is full of curiosities about maths such as this gem below:

 

 

I particularly loved the post about Gabriel’s Horn:

And pictures of Gabriel’s horn made out of paper cones. Gabriel’s horn is the surface obtained by revolving the curve y = 1/x for x> or = 1/2 about the -axis. Mathematics professors ‘wow’ introductory calculus students by sharing its paradoxical properties: it has finite volume, but infinite surface area. As they say, “you can fill it with paint, but you can’t paint it.”

 

The Golden Arches get a working over as well. Are they based on a parabola, Catenary (strung up chain hanging under it’s own weight) or other. It turns out it is other … the Golden Arches fit an ellipse.

 4.

Visualising Math is a terrific Tumblr feed run by Monica Anuforo and Casey M. both college maths students from Minnesota, USA. I think Monic’a comments on the blog tell us all how important it is to engage Middle School students.

 

Monica Anuforo: Hello! I’m an 19 year old Nigerian-American female. Obviously, I’m a fan of mathematics. I was one of those people who were lucky enough to find out that MATH IS AWESOME as early as middle school as opposed to later in life.

 

 

The Tumblr feed is a fabulous collection of mathematical images including fractals, gifs and jokes. Some of these images (See below) could be drawn, coloured or constructed by Middle School students so they too can discover that maths is awesome!!!

 

 

 5.

Math for Lovers is an anonymous Tumblr feed run by Kcmr. It is an eclectic collection of maths art, gifs and jokes. While it hasn’t been updated for awhile the images are still worth exploring. Here are just two:

Faig Ahmed is an internationally recognized artist from Baku, Azerbaijan, who represented Azerbaijan at the Venice Biennale in 2007. He is well known for his conceptual works that utilize traditional decorative craft and the visual language of carpets into contemporary sculptural works of art.

Cut and paste novel wall art at etsy.

You have to love a maths blog that announces:

This is why geometry is important kids. It can blow your mind.

This is a brilliant clip of Klemens Torggler’s kinetic art door based on rotating squares. The special invention makes it possible to move the object sideways without the use of tracks.

 6.

Math is Beautiful,a maths tumblr stream, is oldish and seriously mathsy but some of the stunning visual images and interesting gifs would intrigue Middle school students. e.g. The image below is a screen grab of a circle of dots that rolls around the circumference inside a bigger circle …. but … but .. but … the gif shows that the dots actually only move along the diameters marked. Fas-kin-ating!

 

 

Here is another screen shot (above) of a gif tagged ‘I cannot stop staring at this. Try it. Your mind will be taken over by a higher power.

 7.

The Advanced Geometry Tumblr stream is a stunning visual feast combining art, geometry and design. By art I mean … could be arty but naked bodies. But exploring the imagery is simply inspiring.

 

Randomly Generated Polygonal Insects by ‘Istvan’ for NeonMob

 8.

Susan Lombardo created the Math and Fiber blog for students in an upper division college geometry course. The beauty of this blog it gives step by step instructions on how to create a crocheted coral reef, adds the maths behind the project and many interesting links.

CONSERVATION CROCHET Project at the University of Washington

And Gabrielle Meyers’ Hyperbolic Surfaces

 9.

Hyperbolic Crochet Blog

Also check out Hyperbolic Crochet Blog of a Palestinian Maths teacher. Daina Taimina combines math education, knitting and crochet and her love of art in her book Crocheting Adventures with the Hyperbolic Planes. This blog also provides a fascinating looking at math taught in a different language and script!!!!!!

 10.

The Virtual Math Museum links you to some of the most fabulous maths artists in the world including:

Brian Johnston and his Hydrogen Orbital (above)

and Luc Bernard and his Kuen’s Surface:

A Meditation on Euclid, Lobachevsky, and Quantum Fields.

 

 

And more ….

10 Amazing RANDOM Maths Blogs

It is Mathspig’s Mission to bring you news of some of the most practical, inspiring and intriguing maths blogs, tumblr posts and Twitter feeds out there in the blogosphere. And what a great day to do this. Happy Square Root Day people! (from Mathematica Curiosa below)

 

The following blogs et al fall into the RANDOM but totally intriguing category. Enjoy! 

1.

The background pattern is antagonist from here.

When not writing and hosting Quick and Dirty Tips’ Math Dude podcast, Jason Marshall works as a research scientist at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) studying the infrared light emitted by starburst galaxies and quasars. Here he is as The Maths Dude:

 

And here he is as an Astrophysicist dude:

 

 

 

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2.

Curiosa Mathematica is run by Jens Bossaert. It shows extraudinary images such as the animation by two cubes  showing the roots of the polynomials x⁵ + tx + 1 and x⁵ + tx² + 1  as t varies. (Shown without animation below) I’d tell you lots more about Jens except his homepage is in Dutch!!!

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3.

LIFE THROUGH A MATHEMATICIAN’S EYES is a tumblr feed run anonymously but fabulously by a self-described ‘professional mathematical concept disrupter’ who ‘believes that the study of mathematics is like air or water to our technological society’.

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4.

Try and Touch My Asymptote  Got Math? is an annonymous Tumblr stream that is a popouri of all sorts of maths brick-a-brack such as the treasure below..

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5.

Into The Continuum is self-described as a perspective on mathematics, the pattern, and the abstract. This anonymous Tumblr feed not only provides amazing moving patterns, it gives you the code as well. Awesome!!! Here is one, sadly stationary, pattern below.

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6.

Robert Kaplinsky has worked in education since 2003 as a classroom teacher, district math teacher specialist, and University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) instructor. He uses maths to answer some really intrguing questions such as the one below. ‘What was the fastest motorcycle speeding ticket ever?’ is pretty scary!!!!!!!

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7.

Math Prof for Life Tumblr stream uses random comments linked to hilarious gifs. The prof knows, he really knows, how maths students feel … on a bad maths day.

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8.

The Reflective Educator is the Tumblr stream of David Wees, a Canadian Maths teacher. His web page is full of all sorts of interesting reflections on how to teach maths.

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9.

Center of Math is an anonymous Twitter feed which is a glad bag of maths ideas, suggestions, diversions and jokes. Intersesting stuff. Here rre some fab examples of posts.

It’s a pun … maths pun. (Hint: A little fishy.)

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10.

Math Jokes Twitter is literally an endless stream of maths jokes. Who knew there were so many?  And what better way to start the day than with a maths joke. Here are a couple.

 

Maths Mystery Box 10: LETHAL

Middle School Maths Challenge

Symmetry, geometry plus guts and determination.

Make a paper plane that can fly as high as a 5-story building and test it.

You need:

– Half A4 sheet

– Scissors

– A rubber band

The physics of paper is complex. Folder paper is very strong. Here students create a world record folding a piece of paper 13 times.

Crumpled paper is also very strong. Crumple a piece and try and flatten it. More here.

From Instructables blog

Test it but be careful you could take out an eye.

Thanks INSTRUCTABLES.

Now for the BIG challenge:

The above paper plane has 5 wing folds. Can you make a bigger paper plane with more folds. For instance, you could try an A4 sheet.

More from Instructables here: