Opportunities to teach math in a fun way surround us everyday. Here are some sites that use magic tricks, photographs and nature to explore the wonders of math. Enjoy! [Editor's Note: An updated version of this topic can be found here: Fun with Math]
Can something this fun and entertaining be an aid to learning math? Yes, because these brain teasers are mathematical tasks that require logical thinking. Three new teasers for grades three through seven are posted each Thursday, along with the previous week's answers.
What do bunnies, cauliflower and sea snails have in common? A pattern based on the Fibonacci series (0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13...) where each successive number is the sum of the previous two. The original problem that Fibonacci investigated in the year 1202 was how fast rabbits could breed . If you started with a pair of rabbits, how many pairs would you have in a year? This fascinating site reveals the complexities of nature's miracles. Don't miss it!
These nine magic tricks are based on simple mathematics and not on magic. Although to those who do not understand the mathematics, they may seem magical! There are card tricks, calculator tricks and geometry and topology tricks such as this. Challenge a friend to hold a rope in his hands and tie a knot in it without letting go of either end. The solution is really quite simple. Cross your arms before you grab the ends of the rope. When you uncross your arms, there will be a knot in the center of the rope.
Featuring advanced math topics that are currently being studied by mathematicians, Mathmania brings these concepts to life with stories, puzzles and prizes. Try your hand at creating a sorting network or coloring the nodes of a graph. For high school students and math fanatics of all ages, this site provides an uncommon glimpse into the world of mathematical research. It includes tutorials on knot theory, graph theory, finite state machines and sorting networks.
The following links are either new discoveries or sites that didn't make it into my newspaper column because of space constraints. Enjoy!
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