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

The Weather and its Patterns can be COOL

Below is an animated gif of winds around the Earth.
Check out the key below for deeper understanding of what you are looking at.

Source: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/model-data/model-datasets/reanalysis

A 3-D animated image of Reanalysis-2 data for the first ten days of July 1979, in six-hourly intervals. This animation shows a constant 100mph wind speed surface in red. (Note the stronger, more widespread, polar jet stream in the southern hemisphere--this is July, during the southern winter.) A cyan-colored, constant temperature sheet of zero degrees Celsius ripples across the globe, showing the freezing level. Near-surface wind flow is denoted by white flowlines. This image was generated with plots from Unidata's Integrated Data Viewer (IDV) combined with ImageMagick.

Mean Sea Surface Temperatures

Source: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/model-data/model-datasets/sea-surface-temperatures-sst-and-winds

A plot of global, monthly mean wind speeds and directions for September 1990. These data are from the Blended Sea Winds dataset, available through NOMADS. This image was produced with NASA’s Panoply visualization tool.

Here is a cool gif relating to what we are investigating in science and mathematics in MYP2
source: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/High_School_Earth_Science/Climate_and_Its_Causes

Solar Power, Hexagons and a Moose

There has been a video of a moose lighting up a road as it crosses doing the rounds of social media recently. Today I clicked on it  and I was very impressed.  Two plucky people have invented amazing technology - solar panels that can be used as roads, pathways, outdoor areas shaped like hexagons.

If you are in MYP2 or you're a bee you know that the hexagon is part of making this technology strong.

It has won awards - check it out at indiegogo.com and in the video of one of their fans below.
Why isn't their government getting behind something like this? Great question.

I got behind it.

Pi - in it is everything π

Ask a Mathematician / Ask a Physicist

Q: Since pi is infinite, do its digits contain all finite sequences of numbers?

Posted on November 8, 2009 by The Mathematician

Mathematician: As it turns out, mathematicians do not yet know whether the digits of pi contains every single finite sequence of numbers. That being said, many mathematicians suspect that this is the case, which would imply not only that the digits of pi contain any number that you can think of, but also that they contains a binary representation of britney spears’ DNA.... read more in the site. Click the Question, the link 

Fascinating stuff!

How to see when you forget your glasses

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

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.

For Tenzin and others who love the oceans and seas

From I Love Charts, yes that is a site that I do enjoy