A Recursive Process

Giant Gummy Bear #WCYDWT ?

April 15, 2011, 12:00 am

What questions come to mind? Maybe it’s because it’s the day before spring break, but I’m having trouble coming up with good stuff. Is this worthy of the #wcydwt tag?

from http://www.boingboing.net/2011/04/15/worlds-largest-gummi.html

Features & specs:

  • Dimensions: 9.5″ x 5.5″ x 3.5″
  • Equivalent to 1400 regular-size gummy bears
  • Weighs approximately 5 p...

Continue Reading...

Tropicana #WCYDWT

April 14, 2011, 12:00 am

Well? How many oranges to run an LED? A laptop? A TV? A Prius? This one is just asking for a hands on demo.

Continue Reading...

Math Photos: Giant’s Causeway

April 14, 2011, 12:00 am

Also found in Northern Ireland is the Giant’s Causeway, an amazing place to find basalt columns (whatever they are 😉 )

“Unreal” formation, students always say it looks fake. I’ve used these photos in the polygons angles unit for geometry, but I’m sure there are other uses.

Continue Reading...

Math Photo: Northern Irish Arch

April 13, 2011, 12:00 am

I got the idea for this “Math Photo” series from Mr. Honner. I’ll post images of mathematical stuff from my archives from time to time. Why not?

Here is an arch that I found near Cushendall, Northern Ireland, on my honeymoon. Is it parabolic? Or some other kind of arch?

 

Continue Reading...

Möbius Transformations

April 6, 2011, 12:00 am

From Boing boing and linked article:

Abstraction lies at the heart of mathematics. It makes math powerful, but at the same time, it can make math hard to understand. Abstraction makes math simultaneously beautiful and austere, useful and esoteric.

But a picture can tame the mad monster of...

Continue Reading...

Leaking Gasoline Puzzler

April 6, 2011, 12:00 am

The Last Gasp of the Fiat

“A car travels at a steady speed of 45 mph. Its fuel consumption is 30
miles to the gallon. It has a 15-gallon gas tank, which was full when the car started off. But at the very moment the car begins to move at 45 mph, the gas tank begins to leak fuel.

“After 225 mi...

Continue Reading...

Khan Academy and SBG

March 30, 2011, 12:00 am

@CmonMattTHINK put forth a comment on twitter a couple of mornings ago:

Salman Khan TED-talks about classroom inversion:
http://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_reinvent_education.html Very exciting, yes. But I must be the cranky old man and say..
SO much of this (and SBG) i...

Continue Reading...

So I’m watching the idiot tube the other day and I saw a commercial by Scott Paper Company that claimed that if everyone in America used their tubeless toilet paper product, then we would save two Empire State buildings of toilet paper rolls every year.

Two Empire State buildings of toilet paper...

Continue Reading...

The Cosmonaut: An Economic Experiment

March 28, 2011, 12:00 am

So the guys who made the glif with much success, are now introducing another product on kickstarter.

The Cosmonaut. Its a wide-grip capacitive stylus for tablets.

The interesting thing is their pricing model. They are selling 3,000 of them, and they need to raise $50,000 to make that po...

Continue Reading...

Two Great Graphing Tools

March 24, 2011, 12:00 am

Here’s a quick post describing two pretty great graphing extensions for google chrome:


And:

To install the extensions, you need to have a relatively new version of chrome. Next go to the webstore and search for the right extension.

Enjoy!

Continue Reading...