No Frills MATHs Skills for Parents 4: FRACTIONS for Beginners

Here is a post on Lego Fractions by New York Grade 3 teacher Alycia Zimmerman. Surprisingly I found this on an art website.

Just play with the Lego blocks. Add and subtract … you can even multiply and divide.

Next time.

The Lego Olympics 2020

Awesome Lego Maths and a Giant Lego Tree

You may not want Lego brick blossoms falling on your head,

but the Giant Lego Cherry Blossom tree has some awesome maths

to explore. See the tree built in fast forward below.

Maths isn’t TOO HARD; it’s TOO BORING, Sir!

Hello my little Peeps,

In 2012 The New York Times ran an article by Andrew Hacker titled ‘Is Algebra Necessary?’ The argument was, basically, that too many students find algebra difficult and colleges in America use math results to screen students thus further disadvanting already disadvantaged students. The author had a point. eg. Of all who embark on higher education, only 58 percent end up with bachelor’s degrees. The main impediment to graduation: freshman math.

Perhaps, algebra could be taught in a different way. Mathspig was inspired by New York Grade 3 teacher, Alycia Zimmerman, who uses Lego to teach fractions (See next post) and came up with the following examples.

Lego Mean, Median and Mode

Lego Algebra

But Mathspig has always lerved Lego Maths. Here are just a few examples;

Ratios: Lego Olympics

Ratios: The Rosetta Project Scaled down to a Lego Universe

Other links to Lego Maths.

And while you are doing your Lego Maths you an also use the Lego Template to design your own Lego Figurine.

Download Template here.

Have fun peeps.

Cheerio

Mathspig

 

Lego Fractions

Here is a post on Lego Fractions by New York Grade 3 teacher Alycia Zimmerman. Surprisingly I found this on an art website.

Mathspig found this Lego Maths so much fun she thought she’d try some more. Here is the result:

Lego Mean, Median and Mode

Lego Algebra

Lego Mean, Median, Mode

Students can calculate the Mean, Median and Mode using Lego. Here is the exciting part:

The lego stacks become the graph

START with 40 LEGO BRICKS

Draw a graph of No. of Blocks Vs No. of Prongs (per block) Make sure all blocks are the same height.

Start with 40 bricks.

Sort into Stacks to create graph of

 No. Prongs Vs No. Bricks

This is a close up of the stacks above.

The no. of bricks in each stack is written on top of the stack.

 

Lego Algebra

This Lego Algebra is designed as s a demonstration, rather than a student activity.

Let x = no. of Lego Bricks.

Now find x:

 

 

Don’t forget there is a lot of algebra fun on Mathspig with Algee Baa: Algebra for Beginners

The Rosetta Project scaled down to a Lego Universe

According to Warwick Holmes, ESA:

The images were taken by the OSIRIS-Narrow-Angle-Camera on-board Rosetta spacecraft orbiting 15.5km above the surface of Comet-67P. They show the Philae trajectory before and after the first touchdown, which occurred at 15:34 GMT (12 Nov).  As previously reported the harpoons did not fire into the comet to hold Philae down.

The small inserted images show the imprint of the three Philae foot-pads left in the dusty surface of the comet (compare “before” 15:23 image and the “after” images at 15:43)  Philae first touchdown was at 15:34 GMT.

Philae bounced off the comet surface after the first touchdown and remained “airborne” for 1hr 50min.  The first bounce was 1km high and went 1km directly east on this image.

Philae then touched down a second time resulting in a much smaller second bounce which lasted only 7 minutes.  The gravitational force on the surface of Comet-67P is 1/50,000th of (“g”) Earth’s gravity, hence the very high and long re-bounds.

This image does not show the second or final third touchdown positions as they were outside the field of view of this image as Philae continued heading east with respect to this image.

Finally, Philae completed 100% of the science data acquisition sequence that was planned on the surface despite the “rough” landing(s).  It will probably be several months before exact scientific findings are being published as the scientists shall be spending many weeks processing and examining the plethora of scientific data from Philae and Rosetta over the landing site.

 This is fabulous. Live Comet up date here. 

To appreciate the distances involved we will scale everything down to the

Lego Universe:

 More Rosetta data from Warwick Holmes, ESA.