When I was introduced to radian measure in high school, I knew just one thing: How to convert between radians and degrees. Had you asked me to illustrate a radian on a circle or to explain why radian measure was useful, I would have been stumped. In this post, I’ll describe a Web Sketchpad activity...
In my prior blog posts, I’ve presented methods for constructing ellipses using Web Sketchpad and paper folding. The other conic sections are feeling a bit left out, so let’s explore some techniques for constructing parabolas. All three Web Sketchpad models below (and here) are based on the distance definition of a parabola: The set of...
Attention Sketchpad fans: If you’re a Mac user and would like to give the new Mac Sketchpad a spin, go ahead and contact me so that we can add you to our beta test. Several weeks ago, Apple released MacOS Catalina and brought an end to all 32-bit apps, including Sketchpad 5.06. Luckily, Nick Jackiw,...
Of all the conic section construction techniques, my favorite is undoubtedly the approach that requires nothing more than a paper circle. Here’s what to do: Draw or print a circle and its center, point A, on a sheet of paper. Cut out the circle. Mark a random point B anywhere on the circle. Then, fold...
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 point P and...
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 solving them over weeks at a time. In this...
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...
Arrays can be enormously helpful tools for helping young learners to visualize multiplication. Early work with arrays also sets the stage for more advanced mathematics, like binomial multiplication. In this blog post, I present several interactive arrays built with Web Sketchpad as part of the Dynamic Number project. The interactive array model below (and here) consists...
I was delighted that Daniel recently posted our Binomial Multiplication sketches in Web Sketchpad format. I thought about those sketches when I noticed a fairly new myNCTM thread on “When and How do we phase out the body in math education?”
We live in a golden age of number puzzles. Sudoku is probably the most famous of all modern-day number puzzles, but there are many Japanese puzzles that are also gaining popularity, such as KenKen and Menseki Meiro. In this post, I’d like to introduce a number puzzle for young learners that predates these challenges by 40...