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

Welcome Back and BIG NEWS

The Fields Prize has been awarded to a woman for the first time.

"Iranian-born mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani on Wednesday became the first woman to be awarded the Fields Medal, mathematics' equivalent to the Nobel Prize." Please read more in the CBC online here. 

You can also read more in The Guardian - a nice interview piece and The Stanford University press release, where Maryam Mirzakhani is a Professor of Mathematics. 

Thanks to Ajarn Lana for sharing this with the Mathematics department.

We are all working with Stanford University this year to develop our Mathematics and a growth mindset and you can puzzle over the famous puzzle that ignited her mathematical curiosity.

Add all of the numbers from 1 to 100 with a system that isn't 1+2+3+4 <-- there is a shortcut (:

The Depth of the Problem of MH370

http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/world/the-depth-of-the-problem/931/

Click on the link, this article has a wonderful infographic about just how difficult it is to try and find the black box (Australian invention) of MH370.

They say time is running out, but what about how long it took them to find the Titanic or the Air France aeroplane? They will keep on looking, but will they find this one?

Which governments do you think should continue to look for the wreckage of MH370 and why?

Units of Measurement:

feet and metres 

from google.com

PSI - pounds per square inch
Source - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pounds_per_square_inch

pings
http://science.howstuffworks.com/transport/flight/modern/black-box8.htm
How Stuff Works is a great site.

MYP2 and the Giant Rubber Duck

Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman makes giant ducks.

Each one is unique and they have a message for the world.

What is that message?

The Arrival by Halanslicensed under CC by A NC SA 

MYP2 have been working on the mathematics of generalisation or algebra. They find patterns. They create formulas. They estimate. They justify. They compare methods. They discuss accuracy. They form hypothesis. They tackle long problems, not short one liners. MYP2 are mathematicians at work.

Now they have been asked to bring all of their skills together to work out if Phuket can produce enough rubber for one of these ducks. It is not a yes or no answer, we want details. 

How much rubber is produced right next to PIADS? 

How much rubber is needed?

What are those ducks all about?

Why spread the message with a rubber duck? 

We have more questions - check out the windows of the maths room. 

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?

Mathematicians, the unsung heroes of research from The Age, in Melbourne

Hello to all reading this blog. I try to read my local paper from Melbourne as often as I can and the other day there was an interesting article about the amazing research that mathematicians do.

They aren't racing through ten problems to check the answers, they are problem solvers working on long tasks checking and reflecting on their work as they go.

Please enjoy this article by Andi Horvath about

Mathematicians, the unsung heroes of research

Nature's Shape - is it the HEXAGON?

In MYP2 on Loy Krathong day at school we had another look at nature's shape by watching another cool video from The Code from the BBC.

So many great questions come from this video.

Oh, we also learnt that waveboarders go beyond the normal times tables. Waveboarders know their 180 times tables because of the turns they make/take on their boards.  Very cool!

What is Nature's Shape? Does it have a shape? What's your favourite Shape? Do circles make you happy?

In MYP2 we are looking at patterns, and how to communicate what we see using the language of mathematics. This then becomes something we can use to make predictions.

Our Unit Question is "What is nature's shape?" Do you know?

Here is one of my favourite patterns and some of my favourite Mathematics.

Some of my students said "no! anything but Fibonacci" when I first mentioned patterns this year.  That made my mathematical heart and soul ache with sadness for my students. There is so much incredible beauty in nature that can be communicated by the incredible versatility of Mathematics.

I hope this helps to spread the joy and curiosity


Here is the Vimeo Channel of their work.

And if you'd like to get deeper into how they made the video (using gorgeous mathematics) please check out the blog that goes with this video right here.

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.

The Education of Girls

Mika and Tera Young are raising money to send a girl to school. Sending girls to school changes the world. As well as providing the one girl with an opportunity to learn and access possibilities that could have been out of her reach, she will impact other lives and those lives will impact even more lives.

Prickly Pear Lemonade by Bryan Davidson,
on Flickr licensed under CC by NC & A

Again and again when you look at the education of girls in the world it is one of the key indicators for development.

In MYP2 we are looking at patterns and how to write these mathematically, developing formulae to help make predictions.

If we know the cost of one pink lemonade, how many do we need to sell to make 10,000 Baht?

• What questions do you have?
• How can you set up the maths to help us reach our goal?
• If we don’t sell enough on day one, how many times do we need to run our pink lemonade stand to send a girl to school?

In MYP3 we are looking at the mathematics of chance. We have already asked ourselves how unlikely was it that we were actually born when we think about everything it took to make us. Ask an MYP to explain or me or Ajarn Hugo.

So what decides our future? What things decide our circumstances and opportunities that are out of control and quite random and what choices can we make to change these? Who can help?

In MYP4 we are busy designing a useful space (stay tuned) but they would be excellent people to ask about how to set up the pink lemonade stand to ensure that everyone who wants to support this can get their pink lemonade quickly to help increase sales.

In MYP5 we are looking at data and how they make patterns that we can mathematically model for predictions of all shapes and sizes.  Using www.gapminder.org we can see that the education level of girls and the percentage of girls educated creates patterns that you can’t ignore.

Help Mika and Tera:

• Buy pink lemonade
• Do the mathematics to help them reach their goals
• Use mathematics to help your understanding of why this is so important and how you are very lucky yourselves.
• Check out www.gapminder.org - mathematics can help to make the world a better place. 

Bubble Artist - it's a real job

"The sphere is nature's most efficient shape"

In MYP2 we are asking ourselves "What is nature's shape?". We stopped to look at the sphere from the BBC series called The Code.