Really old
Tom Lehrer is a singer, songwriter, satirist, pianist and mathematician who has written some wonderful songs. In 1959 he wrote a song called "New math". At that time, much of mathemati...
Number Sense
Genres
Grade
California wildfire
Wildfires are burning in the Sierra Nevada Mountains near Yosemite National Park. In this activity we ask students to examine various maps of this California region, calculate distances us...
Bits, bytes, and nibbles
Clicking on the image will show it larger.
I'm not very good at understanding how large my device capacities are and how big the files that I want to download are in comparison. I decid...
Methane math
Updated! Carbon dioxide and methane are our two most prevalent human-contributed greenhouse gases. This holstein cow is one of many huge contributors to our methane production. &nb...
My teacher says this stream is parabolic. Is he correct?
Instead of asking students to just believe what you've said, why not ask them to verify your assertions? Students plot the points of the stream, perhaps map them with an equation generated b...
Ladder figuring
Brian can't even go to his town's spring festival without seeing math.
Let your class approximate the height or length of this ladder by using the relative size of the cars or the p...
Big gulp
Do you or your students love sugary drinks? What if it were against the law to order a large sugary drink where you lived? On September 13th, 2012 the New York City Health Department ban...
Lifespan of a meme, the Harlem Shake
Five friends who skateboard and video tape made up a strange dance one afternoon and filmed it on February 2nd (look it up on youtube!). Now the whole world knows them and their da...
Cruising
There have been a lot of cruise ship mishaps and disasters this year. While these are in the news, let your students consider how these floating cities manage their resources and which of their need...
Voyager on the edge
The two Voyager space probes are in the news recently as they approach the edge of our solar system. Scientist can tell that the Voyager's environments are changing. They are receiving m...