Maths
COULD IT BE MAGIC?
The central theme of these workshops was Maths in performance, so we had activities on Magic, Yoga, Origami, Japanese Abaci and an additional unrelated idea based on the changing face of maths in education.
The central theme of these workshops was Maths in performance, so we had activities on Magic, Yoga, Origami, Japanese Abaci and an additional unrelated idea based on the changing face of maths in education.
The video above describes a whole series of experiments exploring the ancient art of paper folding and its relationship to mathematics. Students began by attempting to create a paper aeroplane that could fly the length of the sports hall. They then competed to create a sheet of folded paper that could be opened and closed as fast as possible. This involved a great deal of creative problem solving and design know-how. Finally, the team created origami dodecahedra in order to design a three dimensional paper version of the solar system!
Another group decided to create explore how to make and use an abacus in order to improve their calculating abilities. As you can see, they not only achieved this aim but also created some beautiful objects.
One of the 'Could it be magic?' workshop activities involved exploring shape through acrobalance. After creating shapes collaboratively, photographs were taken of each group. On the second day these were transformed into abstract patterns using Photoshop using the principles of reflection and rotation.
In this workshop, students learned about the relationship between card tricks and mathematical concepts.