Using Steven Strogatz’s Infinite Powers with a 7th grader

My copy of Steven Strogatz’s new book arrived a few weeks ago:

My lol super power is being the last person in my twitter feed to read a book that was released today . . . @stevenstrogatz 🙂 pic.twitter.com/BriBlTwKx2

— Mike Lawler (@mikeandallie) April 2, 2019

The book is terrific and the math explanations are so accessible that I thought it would be fun to ask my younger son to read the first chapter and get his reactions.

Here’s what he thought and a short list if things that he found interesting:

After that quick introduction we walked through the three things that caught his eye – the first was the proof that the area of a circle is :

Next up was the “riddle of the wall”:

Finally, we talked through a few of the Zeno’s Paradox examples discussed in chapter 1:

I think you can see in the video that Strogatz’s writing is both accessible and interesting to kids. I definitely think that many of the ideas in Infinite Powers will be fun for kids to explore!