The 8 Times Tables Can Be Cool

As many of my students know I do not enjoy times tables. I missed quite a bit of primary school maths so speedy tables are not my thing. In particular it's the 8s that make me pause the most. Speed doesn't matter, it's the process. For me it's just doubling my four times tables.

Bec Campbell shared the following with me and yes it is pretty cool. Even cooler is to ask why it happens....

The BBC and Your Life So Far..

A while ago for another class I posted a cool created by the BBC.

http://thisismathsland.blogspot.com.au/2014/10/your-life-on-earth-cool-interactive.html

Input some data about yourself and then see what has happened since you were born...

There are some very big numbers for you to enjoy.

BIG NUMBERS and a COOL SITE

Thanks to Tom Avent for sharing two Youtube channels I had not seen before, and I like to watch science and maths videos. I spent about an hour looking around.

Here is one to get you started with some big numbers from the good people at ASAP Science:

But wait... there's more...

This is another excellent Youtube channel called FW Thinking. 

Enjoy! I did (:

Mathematical Humour

Thanks to Jack Edwards, in 7D,  for sharing this Mathematical joke. Have you seen any funny mathematical jokes?

Thanks to Stephen Guerra, in 7D, 

History of Number Systems Investigation - some links

Where to begin when looking for information on different number systems?

You could ask your parents - maybe they know about a cool system for numbers and counting. 

You could ask your librarian - there are books about mathematics!

There are some sites online too. Ms. O'Hara and I have found some sites to share with you.
If you search, use good search terms. One of my favourites is "for kids". I use this in almost every search I do (:

Binary at mathisfun http://www.mathsisfun.com/binary-number-system.html
Counting on your fingers with binary http://www.mathsisfun.com/numbers/binary-count-fingers.html

Roman Numerals http://www.ducksters.com/kidsmath/roman_numerals.php

Archimedes Lab http://www.archimedes-lab.org/numeral.html

Numberphile is a wonderful Youtube channel

This one has a long list of number systems and labels their complexity or simplicity with happy and not so happy faces.   http://gwydir.demon.co.uk/jo/numbers/comparison.htm  

Another page on this site is http://gwydir.demon.co.uk/jo/numbers/index.htm with a few famous number systems.

This is a bit more ‘wordy’: http://www.math.wichita.edu/history/topics/num-sys.html

This site had some interesting facts, but it might be a little challenging with its sophisticated matheamatical language http://mentalfloss.com/article/31879/12-mind-blowing-number-systems-other-languages

Billy the Bug and Graph Mole are Hungry

Hello Grade 7 or anyone else that struggles with plotting, reading or writing coordinates.

Use a game to learn how to do this. No worksheets required!
Learn through the game and mistakes along the way. Feed Billy, he's hungry...

Billy the Bug - right here!


Graph Mole has extension activities - negative indices and also decimals. You start with positive integers.

Student Mathematical Art - Year 7 2016

Have you been enjoying Spirograph online?

Oli Bilston shared his beautiful work with me in class and then sent me the image. Do you have any you'd like to contribute to this page? Scroll to see more...

Oli Bilston 7D Wesley GW

Stephen Guerra 7D Wesley GW

Stephen Guerra 7D Wesley GW

Stephen Guerra 7D Wesley GW

Bec Campbell 7D Wesley GW

Growing your Brain

You've heard me talk about making mistakes and taking your time. Here is an expert, Jo Boaler, taking you through some of the latest in brain research. Jo is a professor of Mathematics Education at Stanford University in the USA.

Remember 18 x 5 and all the different ways to solve this problem. 

Which was your method? Show your method and try another. 

Do the same using your method and one other with 16 x 7 or    14 x 22

Show your working you did in your head visually like the examples below for 18 x 5

The Human Calculator

Thank you to Aidan Sturge. I did enjoy and was pleased to start class with it today. I am also keen to check out that Youtube channel. Thanks for sharing!

From: Aidan Sturge
Subject: human calculator

Check this video out this guy I saw on TV a while ago he is faster than  a calculator the link is below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtotrboSUqQ

Hope you enjoy

-Aidan

Spirograph! One of the things I loved the most as a kid

Whenever I am in vintage or second hand shops I always look for Spirograph. I could twirl the things for ages making amazing designs.

It's now online! I would prefer the set, but this is amazing.

Make something beautiful and upload it to the gallery.

Better yet investigate the mathematics in those designs.

CHECK IT OUT HERE

Noodles, hair, atoms, exponential growth and decay and fractions.

This cool Youtube video has mathematics relevant for grade six and grade 11 courses right now.

For grade six - they can compare it with the doubling we did when we discussed ebola. They can also look at half of a half - multiplying a fraction by a fraction or as we say in mathsland the product of two fractions.

Grade 11 - this is exponential growth and decay simultaneously depending on how you view your noodles.

Maths and you guessed it... Christmas

Here is a gift for you from Mathsland - a game. It's the latest thing and Jo Boaler of Stanford likes it so much she is now on the team..

Download Mathbreakers and puzzle it out. It looks like Mathbreakers will just keep growing too.

And this ancient game - I haven't beaten the computer yet. Can you? Cool Math - Mancala

For the next game you will need a 10 by 10 grid - this is called How Close to 100? To make it more challenging try How Close to 1 and use decimals. This is from Jo Boaler.

You will need

• two players

• two dice

• recording sheet

This game is played in partners. Two children share a blank 100 grid. The first partner rolls two number dice.

The numbers that come up are the numbers the child uses to make an array on the 100 grid. They can put the array anywhere on the grid, but the goal is to fill up the grid to get it as full as possible. After the player draws the array on the grid, she writes in the number sentence that describes the grid. The second player then rolls the dice, draws the number grid and records their number sentence. The game ends when both players have rolled the dice and cannot put any more arrays on the grid. How close to 100 can you get?

Variation Each child can have their own number grid. Play moves forward to see who can get closest to 100. 

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 (:

Landing a Rocket on a Comet. Happening in the next 12 hours...

Landing on the moon - done
Landing a robot on Mars - done

Landing on a comet is a little trickier. Why? What do you think?

Why are we trying to do it?

Find out here

Follow it live from the people at NASA right HERE

FINALLY! FLYING CARS

They have been talking about these forever. Many other things have come to be that were only crazy future ideas when I was a kid like...

THIS CRAZY DREAM CAME TRUE
Imagine if you could see the person you were calling on the phone and have a face to face conversation no matter where you were in the world. Hello Skype and some similar type face to face communication technology.

WE ARE STILL WAITING FOR:
We are still waiting for time travel (Alina make it happen!) but I heard the other day that the conjecture is travel into the past is impossible but other dimensions... why not?

Teleportation is being worked on by the Entanglement Generation, I kid you not.

RECENT HAPPENING
What has happened as far as dreams beginning to come true and THE FUTURE IS NOW type of stuff?

THE FLYING CAR - YAY and, quite frankly, about time.

Read about it here in The Guardian and WATCH THE VIDEO TOO



"AeroMobil flying car prototype 3 is ready 8 | wordlessTech." 2014. 30 Oct. 2014 <http://wordlesstech.com/2014/10/10/aeromobil-flying-car/aeromobil-flying-car-prototype-3-is-ready-8/>

Your Life on Earth - cool interactive from the BBC

Your life on earth

Enter your details and this cool interactive will show you some of the things that have happened in your life time.

Enjoy!

BBC Earth Story Right Here

and while I am here this is pretty cool too:
World Population and Me

From The Good People at the Guardian Data Blog

Data data data - it's the information age your data is being harvested right now. Somewhere someone is using technology to record that you are reading this blog post. If they can they will also record any metadata they can too. 

You work with data too and it's important to know what all those terms mean - download speed, bits, bytes, Mbps and MBps. 

Have you downloaded or uploaded in different countries? Check out this cool visualisation of various speeds and quality of the internet - you can change the countries...

Have fun!

Download deathmatch: compare internet speed worldwide

Cat photo by Flickr user wenlian chen

source:  "Download deathmatch: compare internet speed worldwide ..." 2013. 14 Oct. 2014 <http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/interactive/2013/dec/15/compare-internet-speed-worldwide>

pi 10 Trillion of its Digits - actually only 4 Million of them...

It took 371 days of computing TEN TRILLION decimal places of pi.
Doesn't sound impressive - that requires 44 TB of disk to find them and 7.6 TB to store them, when compressed.

In 1949 the ENIAC computer took 70 hours to calculate pi to 2037 digits.

Check out the Beautiful visualisation and effort in this very cool site and more on how long it would take humans to say all of these digits.

http://two-n.com/pi/

Why do we care? Because this number is everywhere, because it has no pattern, because they say inside these digits are all of our phone numbers, birth dates and every possible combination you could think of. BECAUSE humans and other animals need patterns to understand the world around them. pi is a beautiful mystery and mathematicians like you love puzzles.



"An average person can read out approximately 120 digits ..." 2012. 13 Oct. 2014 <http://www.two-n.com/pi/>

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. 

Very Cool New Thing - check it out

http://webdemo.myscript.com/#/demo/analyzer

This does amazing things with stuff you do by hand. Have a play and see...

from this 

 to this

and this - write in the equation and Desmos graphs it. Nice!