6-8
Students consider the amount of time that space travelers need to travel to the four terrestrial planets. Students also think about what kinds of events might occur on Earth while the space travelers are on their journey.
9-12
In this lesson, students consider the costs of owning a car and ways to lessen those costs. In particular, highway and city mileage are considered, and optimal mileage is calculated using fuel consumption versus speed data.
9-12
A surprising result occurs when two line segments are drawn through a point on the diagonal of a parallelogram and parallel to the sides. From this construction, students are able to make various conjectures, and the basis of this lesson is considering strategies for proving (or disproving) one of those conjectures.
9-12
By calculating the areas of regular polygons inscribed and circumscribed about a unit circle, students create an algorithm that generates the never-ending digits of π, a common curiosity among high school students.
6-8
In this lesson, students take on the role of a villager in a
third-world country trying to feed her village. While listening to you
read aloud the book
One Grain of Rice by Demi, students work
collaboratively to come up with a bargaining plan to trick the raja
into feeding the village using algebra, exponential growth, and
estimation.
9-12
Archimedes was the first mathematician to develop a converging series
approximation to π. That highly influential discovery guided the
development of calculus many hundreds of years later. However, his
method only gives lower and upper boundaries that form intervals known
to capture π, not a single numeric estimate of π. In this lesson,
students ask, “Where is π located in those intervals?” They also
discover an improvement to Archimedes' method that generates the
infinite digits of π more efficiently and accurately.
6-8
In 1999 the world population passed the 6 billion mark. In this lesson, students predict when it will reach 7 billion. Students discuss the reliability of their predictions, compare them to past trends, and discuss social factors that can affect population growth.
3-5
When students play the Factor Trail game, they have to identify the
factors of a number to earn points. Built into this game is cooperative
learning — students check one another's work before points are awarded.
The score sheet used for this game provides a built-in assessment tool
that teachers can use to check their students' understanding.
3-5, 6-8
The
Stomachion is an ancient tangram-type puzzle. Believed by
some to have been created by Archimedes, it consists of 14 pieces cut
from a square. The pieces can be rearranged to form other interesting
shapes. In this lesson, students learn about the history of the
Stomachion, use the pieces to create other figures, learn about symmetry and transformations, and investigate the areas of the pieces.
6-8, 9-12
In this lesson, students experience an application of proportion that scientists actually use to solve real-life problems. Students learn how to estimate the size of a total population by taking samples and using proportions. The ratio of “tagged” items to the number of items in a sample is the same as the ratio of tagged items to the total population.
