30 April 2016
27 April 2016
STEAM: Mathemagic
For my second STEAM activity, I decided to teach a magic trick. Once again, Numberphile was the inspiration. This time, with Matt Parker.
In the nine card version of the trick, you only deal out the deck twice before the reveal, which makes things easier to remember. This is good for the students if they want to perform some magic for their parents later, and good for the presenter since there's less chance of screwing up.
For the STEAM activity, I asked the class who liked magic (everyone). Then I asked who wanted to learn a magic trick (everyone). I gathered the students around me, and told them I had a card trick that was based on mathematics. I did the trick for them, picking a random student to be the person being tricked. Then I showed them how the trick is done by replacing the "chosen" card with a red suited card, and having all the other cards be black. I sorted the deck before the activity so I could just grab nine cards off the top of the deck for the first demonstration, then deal off nine more cards to get the imbalanced set.
As a total aside, the fact that I could deal off nine cards and have only one of them be red turned out to be pretty impressive in and of itself. Preparation is everything. In the cooking world, it's called mise en place. Back to the story.
Once we ran through how to do the trick a couple times, I had the students pair up and gave everyone nine cards (from pre-shuffled decks), and told them to switch off doing the trick to each other. I never explained the mathematics behind the trick unless I was specifically asked. The next 20 minutes or so was the students practicing their magic, with me, the teacher, and my son walking around helping out.
At the end of the activity, as we were saying our goodbyes, I asked the students if they wanted to see one more trick before I left. They rushed up into a semicircle around me, and I performed the following on the teacher with all the students watching.
25 April 2016
STEAM: Geometry and Topology
I got ambushed at the parent-teacher conference for my son's second grade class. The combination of the teacher saying how nice it was that the other second grade class had Mr. Orlando to do STEM demonstrations and wouldn't it be nice if our class had some too, along with my spouse looking at me, off to my right, I felt like the hunter in Jurassic Park, surrounded by velociraptors ("Clever girl...").
I was trapped. There was no way out. Turned out, that was a Good Thing.
Researching STEAM (I will use the preferred acronym from now on), I quickly discovered my preference for the basic Sciences and Mathematics as opposed to blinky lights and circuitry of Technology and Engineering, so that's where I focused my research.
I would have no more than an hour for each activity, and second graders (seven and eight-year-olds in the United States) do not have the basis to discuss mathematics, or any of the other words in the acronym in depth. So the goal of STEAM in elementary school is not to explain how stuff works, but rather to demonstrate why I became an engineer.
Scientists, mathematicians, and engineers approach life with a sense of wonder. At least the good ones do. They see something novel (or not-so-novel) and think to themselves, "that's cool! I wonder why that is?" then go off and try and figure it out. It is this sense of wonder that STEAM activities are trying to sow.
I've found YouTube to be an invaluable resource in researching STEAM activities. Not only are there a lot of great ideas out there, but the video format lets you see the activity from the participant's standpoint. You get to see what works and what doesn't.
The instant stand outs were two Numberphile videos by Tadashi Tokieda on Geometry and Topology. Now, you may not think Geometry -- and certainly not Topology -- are suitable subjects for second graders. But that's probably because you're thinking of the way Geometry was taught to you back in High School. All definitions and theorems and proofs, sucking the life out of the beauty of mathematics because there was no basis presented for those things, or examples of what you can do with those theorems.
I think Geometry is a perfect subject for young children. It does not require an ability to multiply numbers together, or divide them, or a knowledge of trigonometry, or anything, really. It just requires shapes and objects and a willingness to play, which kids have been doing all their lives.
Tokieda gets this. He has an innate understanding of this. And it comes across in the videos.
Turns out, cutting paper can be more challenging for some second graders than others. I had not realized this going in, but there is a large distribution of abilities in the classroom. Things ran long, so I dropped the joined loop and Mobius loop from the activity and went directly to the joined Mobius loops. Maybe a third of the class got the chirality correct on their loops, resulting in the joined hearts. Heck, I didn't get the chirality correct when doing the demonstration! But I got the reaction I was looking for -- "that's so cool!" -- from at least a few students, so mission accomplished.
23 April 2016
16 April 2016
09 April 2016
Home Run #82: Mars Watch 2003 1
In the summer of 2003, Mars and Earth were in perihelic opposition, meaning Mars and Earth were at their closest approach.
02 April 2016
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