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April 1, 2001
National Mathematics Education Month
By Kim Carter
April is Mathematics Education Month. As it turns out, the Web has so many exciting mathematics sites that the real challenge is sifting through them all to find the best. Below are a few of the ones that tickled my mathematical fancy, with a final site that ThinkQuest students created to index scads of the best of the best.
Mathematical Mentoring
Making Mathematics
High school students participate in mathematical research projects and hook up with a math mentor at this new Web site designed to connect students with professional mathematicians. Math projects, each with Warm Up Problems, Hints, Resources, Teaching Notes, Extension Problems and Results, range from patterns and reasoning to algebra and calculus. Budding mathematicians can check the lock manufacturing Simplex Company's advertising honesty, investigate University of Oregon math professor Marion Walter's Theorem, play with Patterns in Pascal's Triangle or take charge of the Raw Recruits.
Interactive Explorations
ExploreMath.com
Interactive multimedia math activities allow students to investigate relationships in geometry, trigonometry, algebra and precalculus. Watch the graph change appearance by sliding the bar for a variable's value, for instance.
Blankety-Five Squared
This fun game will have you squaring any two-digit numbers that end in five in seconds! After following the step-by-step examples to learn the trick, you can test your skill and speed by taking the Blankety-Five Challenge, then learn why the trick works.
BBC Education Online The Maths File Game Show with your ancient mathematical hosts Hypatia and Pythagoras
Spin the game wheel to pick one of the twelve Shockwaveż math games. Games are organized by topic: Number, Data Handling, Shape Space & Measure and Algebra. Choose your skill level to help the characters solve their problems. Real problems, real fun!
MASTER Tools
These interactive tools and simulation environments encourage exploration and discovery through observation, conjecture, and modeling activities. Gnuplot offers interactive, animated plotting capabilities for both 2D and 3D graphs. The Pit and the Pendulum invites students to calculate the length of Poe's imprisoned narrator's despair. After that they can explore the differences between a simple pendulum and a physical pendulum by setting the characteristics of the blade, the rod and the sweep amplitude before clicking on the "Let 'er Rip!" button.
The Math Forum
Swarthmore's Math Forum includes the Internet Math Library, a collection of units, lessons and activities designed use technology to make mathematics fun and compelling. Here are two of my favorites:
Introduction to Geometry for Primary Students
One of The Math Forum's Internet Math Library units, these lessons introduce young children to geometry. Interactive projects and literature connections combine with technology-based and paper and pencil activities to help children explore patterns, spatial relations and symmetry.
Suzanne's Mathematics Lessons
Suzanne Alejandre's collection of Web Units range from the Multicultural Math Fair, Circle Designs and Crystallography to Tessellations, Geometric Factoring and Magic Squares while Interactive Lessons and Classroom Activities include Java applets that look at polyhedra and Mandlebrot fractals. The Technology in the Classroom section provides Suzanne's online Math 7 course and ClarisWorks graphing activities as well as links to further information on the Web.
Math Applications
The Geometry of War
A series of exhibits investigates the many ways mathematicians of the Renaissance applied geometry to the art of warfare in the late 15th and 16th centuries. The three main divisions of the exhibit are Gunnery, Rangefinding and Surveying, and Fortification. Troop Formations and the Telescope is included in the Summaries as well.
Online Math Applications!
Kids of all ages will find real world math situations to explore here. They can participate in a simulated stock market game, investigate the relationship of math, music and the Mozart effect, walk through the history of math, explore math concepts such as the power of doubling and why personal computers are getting cheaper and better, and learn how math applications make a difference for travel and trips.
More Math fun on the Web
Figure This! Math Challenges for Families
These twenty-eight challenges run the gamut, from algebra, geometry, measurement, number and statistics and probability. Challenge the family to figure out which shape holds the most popcorn, how fast an Arctic tern can fly around the world, whether bigger hands have larger angles and how many people would have to be in a school in order for at least two of them to have the same first and last initials.
Mudd Math Fun Facts
This archive of fun mathematical facts is geared for teachers of upper secondary students. Visitors to the site can click for a random Fun Fact or search by mathematical topic and difficulty level. Searching Calculus/Analysis for "differential" resulted in the Suspended Rope Trick, Bike with Square Wheels, Fourier Ears Only, Whiffle Ball and Sphere Eversions.
Math Links to Keep You Throughout the Year!
Math Archives
Developed by students for ThinkQuest, Math Archives provides links to an extensive range of mathematical resources. Organized by topics, the links are keyed by icons indicated grade range applicability, from K-6 to Graduate and Professional Mathematics, as well as identifying pages that are JAVA or interactive or that include images, animations or movies, or a significant collection of links.
Email: Kim Carter
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