Sound Waves Circular Motion Water Coolness from 9gag

24-Hz sound wave collides with water

Click this link to the 9gag video - very cool

Click the link and watch what sound waves do to water

From the people at 9gag and thanks to Annalis in G09 for sharing it with me.

what is the white rectangle doing there? I don't know - I'll fix that this weekend (:

Rays of Light and The Lunar Eclipse TODAY

Wednesday Evening's Rare 'Impossible' Lunar Eclipse

Check out the Blood Moon this evening. Hopefully the clouds won't cover it. 

6:13pm for Phuket

Here is a clip from NASA

Watch in more detail here from NASA. 

MYP3 Mathematicians Helping Others Understand Curves

Before I introduce three fabulous websites, I'd like to say that ALL of the MYP3 mathematicians have produced wonderful work demonstrating their understanding of curves and their transformations. Mathsland is proud to call them all citizens.

In our unit we were focusing on linear functions y=mx+p, and dipping into some quadratics but some decided they would like to go further and investigate other curves.

We had linear, quadratic, square root, Archimedes Spiral, sinusoidal and exponential curves. It was busy in Mathsland because everyone had different questions and a different adventure.

Three students, Annalis, Chanya and Eugene (alphabetical order chosen there), created websites using skills taught to them by the much beloved and missed Ajarn Marcus. By creating websites they are providing a service to other learners in the world of mathematics that want to know about sinusoidal waves and exponential functions.

Students used the desmos.com/calculator and its groovy sliders to play around with parameters to spot patterns.
check out some sliders here

Now for the websites:

Annalis' Exponentials are Cool

Eugene's Vas Are Sinusoidal Waves

Chanya's Parabolas

How to see when you forget your glasses

or how we see things... from Minute Physics.

Fermi Problems - How Many Soi Dogs are there in Phuket?

A Fermi problem is an estimation problem named after the Enrico Fermi, a twentieth-century, Nobel Prize winning Physicist using very little information.

MYP5 have been working on estimations using sound reasoning and then calculating the absolute percentage error from the excellent site Estimation 180. Other classes have used this site too and it's a wonderful way for anyone (grown-ups too) to develop their number sense. 

It is now time for MYP5 to go a step further and ask a question where the answer is not readily available. Good reasoning will be important here. 

Below this video from ed.ted.com are some famous examples.

 

The circumference of the Earth – using time zones

1.     How many time zones do you pass through when you fly from New York to Los Angeles? 3

2.     How many miles is it, about, over that same distance? about 3000.

3.     How many miles per time zone, on average? about 1000

4.     How many time zones must there be around the world? 24 because there are 24 hours in a day

5.     How many miles around the world? 24 time zones x 1000 miles per time zone = 24000 miles

About 24000 miles around the world.

Fermi's Piano Tuner Problem 

1. At that time Chicago had a population of about 3 million people.
2. Reasonable assumption: average family size is four. Therefore the number of families in Chicago is around 750,000.
3. Reasonable assumption: one in five families owns a piano. Therefore the number of pianos in Chicago will be around 150,000.
4. Reasonable assumption: the average piano tuner serviced four pianos every day for five working day and had two weeks holiday.

We can calculate that in one year a tuner would service 1,000 pianos. 

There is an estimated 150 piano tuners in Chicago.

Example of Fermi Questions:
How many nails are in the Pirate Ship? 
What is the volume of air that I breathe in one day?
How many people in the world are taking photos with their phones in any given minute?
How many soi dogs are on the island of Phuket?

Sad Little Square Song, inspired by wanting more...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tetrahedron.gif

In MYP4 we've been looking into the Platonic Solids.

Thanks to Kaya of MYP4 for this Polygon Song

Leading Architects Design Cool Doll Houses

Twenty famous architects designed doll houses help KIDS, a charity for children with physical and mental disabilities.

This post was inspired by Bpok, Kim and Dreem in MYP4. They are using their google time to develop their Sketchup skills and there is a budding architect amongst them.

Is there a 4th Dimension

After an interesting chat with Dreem in class I thought I would post this great video from the excellent Minute Physics Youtube Channel.