Code breaking is so cool. Above is a short Prezi on Kryptos in Washington, DC. Below is an activity that allows students to encrypt, and decode, their own secret messages using Algebra.
Archimedes says “cone + sphere = cylinder”? April 14, 2012
Archimedes of Syracuse (87 BC – 212 BC), before the eternal time sucks of Facebook and DrawSomething, sat and imagined a cone and a sphere balancing one side of a scale, and on the other side balancing against these two objects was a cylinder. The sphere he imagined has the same diameter as height of the cylinder and the cone and he reasoned that the scale would remain perfectly balanced.
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But would it? Using just their volume formulas, which Archimedes did not yet have, can we see that this works?
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Does sphere + cone = cylinder?
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Was math discovered or invented? March 14, 2011
On this Pi Day in 2011, I find myself wondering if math was discovered or invented. The Pythagoreans believed that math was discovered and that whole numbers ruled the universe. They also did not believe in irrational numbers, of which we now know there are an infinite amount. So then was math invented? I’m not sure….
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How would you split a million dollar$? January 3, 2011
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Here’s an interesting blog post about how a group of 100 students would split the 1 million… not at all! Game Theory: mathematics as a metaphor.
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