In how many different ways can you build a rhombus that stays a rhombus when its vertices are dragged? This assignment, a mainstay of Sketchpad workshops, invariably leads to great discussions because there are a multitude of ways to construct a rhombus, with each method highlighting different mathematical properties of the quadrilateral.
This past January, we introduced the Web Sketchpad Tool Library and Viewer. The Tool Library is a collection of over 60 mathematical tools for customizing a Web Sketchpad model, making it possible for teachers to decide which tools students have available to them on an activity-by-activity basis. The Viewer is a site … Continue Reading ››
Geometry tends not to receive much love in elementary curricula, and that's a shame. In this post, I'll describe some of my new ideas for using Web Sketchpad to introduce young learners to fundamental properties of circles.
On page 1 of the websketch below (and here), begin by asking students to drag … Continue Reading ››
David Henderson, the author of Experiencing Geometry, died this past December. I wrote about David in a prior post, and in particular, his approach of asking us to grapple with a small number of rich problems, allowing us to find our own, often non-traditional, ways of … Continue Reading ››
When the Metamorphosis team of content coaches meet at their New York office, the day is filled with Qi Gong, video case analysis, good food, and—best of all—a mathematical challenge for everyone to investigate and discuss. These problems are chosen to be accessible across a wide range of grade levels and to allow for a variety … Continue Reading ››
In his 1947 book, One, Two, Three...Infinity, physicist George Gamow poses a pirate treasure problem that has since become a classic. Below is my reworded statement of the puzzle.
Among a pirate's belongings you find the following note:
The island where I buried my treasure contains a single palm tree. Find the tree. From the palm tree, … Continue Reading ››
Below are two maps of the United Sates, with the smaller map a 50 percent scaled copy of the original. The edges of the two maps are parallel. Imagine that the maps are printed out, with one resting on top of the other.
Believe it or not, you can stick a pin straight through both maps … Continue Reading ››
The picture below on the left shows a right triangle JML with altitude KM. This altitude is defined as the geometric mean of JK and KL. Using similar triangles, you can prove that JK × KL = KM². Another way to think about this construction is shown below on the right. Start with segments JK and … Continue Reading ››
Twitter is a great place to find geometry problems. The July 22, 2017 post of xylem presented the image below with two squares, ABCD and BFGE, sharing a vertex. Given that AE = 5, what is the length of DG?
My first thought was that surely the problem was … Continue Reading ››