I’m sick and not working today but instead have been sort of day dreaming about all of the math the boys and I worked on this year. The sheer amount of absolutely great ideas that people are sharing via blogs, twitter, or otherwise makes it incredibly easy to find fun projects. Here are some of my memories from 2016.
Again, though, I’m sorry that this likely reads so poorly. Despite being so sick it was fun to write this and think back through the year.
(1) Sharing math that I saw from professional mathematicians
Two of my favorites in this category came from Bjorn Poonen, Eugenia Cheng and Laura Taalman:
The project we did after seeing Poonen’s problem about n-dimensional spheres was the most viewed math project for kids on my blog this year:
Bjorn Poonen’s n-dimensional sphere problem with kids
A neat video from Eugenia Cheng inspired me to revisit an old post from Laura Taalman and do a project on “tiling pentagon cookies”
At the risk of failing to mention lots of people in my current Dayquil-induced state, I’m also incredibly grateful to these professional mathematians who have inspired tons of our projects with the math they’ve shared:
and one of the neatest things that happened to me all year was when Joel David Hamkins created an amazing “fold and punch” activity based on an activity that I found in some old material from “Family Math Night” at my younger son’s school:
Math for nine year olds: fold, punch and cut for symmetry
(2) James Tanton
I have to give him his own category because the work he is doing to share math with kids (and everyone, really) is astonishing.
This project on cutting Mobius strips that I saw in his book “Solve This” is one of the most incredible math projects I’ve ever seen:
An absolutely mind-blowing project from James Tanton
Here are all of our project inspired by Tanton – you can basically pick one at random and have an amazing math conversation with kids (though if you don’t want to pick at random the candy dividing one is really cool!):
Project inspired by James Tanton
(3) Laura Taalman and Henry Segerman’s work in 3d printing
The work that Taalman and Segerman are doing with math and 3d printing is stunning. I mentioned one of projects inspired by Taalman above – there are dozens’s more:
Projects inspired by Laura Taalman
Segerman published a new book about math and 3d printing this year. I was incredibly lucky to be able to bring the boys to a talk he gave about his work:
Projects inspired by Henry Segerman
(4) Sharing new and / or popular math ideas with kids.
Erica Klarreich and Natalie Wolchover are doing amazing science (and especially math!) journalism work at Quanta Magazine. Oh to have had writing like theirs around when I was a kid!
I’m so happy to see pieces like Klarreich’s article on Maryna Viazovska’s sphere packing result
In fact, when I asked my older son what his favorite math memory was from 2016 he said it was learning about sphere packing. Yay!
Wolchover’s article about hyperuniform distributions blew me away and led to a really fun project with the boys:
Using a Natalie Wolchover article to talk about hyperuniform distributions with kids
I don’t think it is possible to overstate the importance of Klarreich’s and Wolchover’s writing. They are going to influence a generation of young mathematicians and physicists.
Another fun math-related item that got a lot of attention this year was Sugihara’s “ambiguous cylinder”:
We really had fun playing with this shape and I want to give a special thanks to Dave Richeson and Brenda Landis for sharing a 3d print of the shape.
Playing with Sugihara’s “ambiguous cylinder”
(5) The sphere packing problem reminded me of the new PBS Infinite Series work that Kelsey Houston-Edwards is doing.
Holy cow are these videos amazing! Here’s just one example:
Wwe are one behind because of the holidays, but each of Houston-Edwards’s videos has inspired a really fun project. Her videos are great tools to use to share math with kids.
Projects inspired by Kelsey Houston-Edwards
(6) Three projects from twitter that completely blew my mind:
(i) Can you believe that a dodecahedron folds into a cube?
There are actually a couple of projects that Simon Gregg’s tweet inspired. The main picture is this one (which always has weird embedding problems, so sorry it isn’t aligned correctly):
Prepping for this project to make sure that we could do it with our Zometool set was really fun, too:
(ii) A zipper Mobius strip from Mathsjams
Much like the James Tanton “cutting a Mobius strip” project above, the idea is to try to guess what the shape is going to look like when you unzip it!
(iii) Ann-Marie Ison’s math art
This was a great project with the boys and I also used it for a talk to a high school math camp at Williams. If you play with the Desmos program below your mind will be blow, too 🙂
(7) We played with more math-related art, too:
Paula Beardel-Kreig’s “Puff Boxes” were incredibly fun:
Playing with Paula Beardell-Krieg’s Puff Boxes
And Henry Segerman’s 3D Printing book introduced me to the work of Bathsheba Grossman, and we explored several of her creations:
Our projects with Bathsheba Grossman’s work
(8) Our Zometool work
I know there are lots of ways to spend money on math-related games, books, and toys in general. Building up a good Zometool set is my #1 recommendation. The opportunities to play and learn and study are endless!
Here are all of our Zometool projects:
Our projects with our Zometool set
I particularly recommend the bubble projects and Nesting Platonic Solids
(9) Dan Anderson’s Gosper Curves
When I asked my younger son what his favorite project from this year was he said that it was playing with the Gosper Curves. He really likes fractals!
We got a nice surprise in April when Dan Anderson sent us some laser-cut versions of the Gosper island shape:
Playing with Dan Anderson’s Gosper Curves
We did a few more Gosper-related project (including a Zome one) which are here:
And, of course, we did a million projects inspired by ideas that Dan shares on twitter:
Our Projects Inspired by Dan Anderson
(10) Patrick Honner’s Pi Day exercise
On March 14th Patrick Honner shared a fun little “Pi Day” exercise:
This terrific project inspired me to try it out in 4 dimensions. That led to a fun multi-day project with my older son as we search for which 4-dimensional platonic solid was the most spherical (according to Honner’s definition).
This project combined ideas from geometry, Zometool, and 3D printing.
Here’s a collection of the projects:
Patrick Honner’s Pi Day Exercise in 4 dimensions
Honner’s “pi day” exercise is a perfect example of why I love all of the sharing of math ideas that people are doing these days. Not in a million years would I have come up with an idea like that – luckily he did, though, and it turned out to be a really fun way to explore more than just 3d objects!
It really was a great year in math for us. Can’t wait to see what 2017 brings.
Mike's Math Page 