Composite Figures Diagram
I refer to this diagram all the time for my online classes. I'm tired of digging through months and months of e-mails just to find it, so I am posting it here!
A Simple Geometry Poem
One of my students came up with this poem to help remember the difference between acute, obtuse, and right angles. Acute angles are small and cute below 90. Obtuse angles are big and obtrusive and mighty, they stand tall over that perfect 90,but right in the middle none can compare the 90 degree angle holds a perfect square!
Scotch Tape and Gas Prices Dilemma
So, my whole recent obsession with Scotch Tape sort of began a few weeks ago when the following problem popped into my mind... Suppose your boss wants you to buy six 1/2 in x 450 in rolls of Scotch tape at the dollar store (remember the 6% Michigan sales tax). Your boss wants you to use the tape to enclose an area of 3,225.8 square cm, but has only given you a budget of $7.00 to do so, including the amount of gas to drive back and forth to the dollar store, which is exactly 1.5 miles away from work.…
Free Open Reference Interactive Geometry Book
Check out this website I found at mathopenref.com I will definitely be using some of the applets here the next time that I teach geometry as part of a pre-algebra course. In fact, maybe I'll have the students read through this and play with all of the applets as part of their homework (before) coming to class.
New Application Problems from the Classroom
Here are few more problems that I came up with during today's class: 1. Clyde owed 8 different people $4 each for some doughnuts that he bought to eat on his birthday. Then when he wasn't looking, Hellman's stole $4 from Clyde's wallet. In order to reclaim his debt, Clyde needed to split up his total losses over a period of nine months. How much debt will he recover over each of the nine months? 2. Clyde went to the store and he bought seven nuclear weapons, but he doesn't know the price of them yet. He had to return…
Interactive Demonstration Tools
Here are a few highlights of some of the Interactive Demonstration Tools that I have come across in the past few weeks:1. All Interactive Whiteboard Resources - Although the applets on this website are designed to be friendly for those classrooms with Smartboards and the like, I see no reason why these applets can't be used in any classroom. In fact, I plan on use this Angle Measure resource when teaching my classes about angles in the upcoming weeks. Other great resources on this website include this Translation Plotter, which helps students to visualize translating a shape in the Rectangular Coordinate…
Mathematics Origami
This morning with a stack of blank, unused paper sitting right next to me, I was thinking about some new projects that I might be able to assign my students for next semester. Then it popped into my mind... Origami! I think an assignment on origami would be especially interesting to my students in art and design. I am looking forward to seeing what students will create in the semesters to come. By the way, below is a link to a related TED talk by Robert Lang. It could serve as a good way to introduce an entire unit on…
Pre-Algebra and Algebra Resources
A few months ago I had students in my Basic College Math class create a game about fractions. One student created "Fraction Bingo". I decided to search the web to see if there were printable bingo sheets available. Well, there were, along with some other activities that I found on the same website from Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. And below is a list of a few of my favorite ones, appropriate for college-level basic math classes (organized by topic): Operations on Numbers Zero Sum Card Game Adding Whole Numbers Tic-Tac-Toe Order of Operations "24" Fraction Bingo Fractions, Decimals, Percents Fraction/Decimal/Percent…
Dimensional Analysis Problem
The other day in my Pre-Algebra class at HFCC we were talking about geometry, but I wanted to link it to the dimensional analysis that we had just done in the previous chapter since I knew that some of the students were struggling with the concept and could probably use the review. So, when the opportunity arose, I came up with a problem off the top of my head. This isn't something that I usually do because I have a hard time being creative under the pressure of standing in front of a room full of students. However, I think…