The Origin of Zero

How can a number not exist? For that matter, how could the number zero not have existed when the number itself means nothing? Write a post that answers the following questions: What strikes you about the articles? How do we decide who discovers what? Who really discovered zero? Is it the person who came up with the concept of zero or the person who discovered the actual number? And how did the entire world come to a consensus without an efficient means of communication?

What is the origin of zero? How did we indicate nothingness before zero? by Robert Kaplan, Scientific American

The Origin of Zero by John Matson, Scientific American

The Boy Who Built A Windmill

The following video is an interview with William Kamkwamba at an annual TED convention. What strikes you? What about this individual is significant and what has he accomplished? What are your initial reactions? What was he inspired by? Why are we, as a country who already has electricity, interested in this man's accomplishments?

Mathematizing

I love it when students are inspired by a math problem and then create their own. My board was full of problems, patterns, and puzzles that my students generated.

The Locker Problem

The Locker Problem

You get to check out the new digs at HTHMars. The new school has these brand new state of the art expandable lockers. The HTH Village has been asked to test these lockers by opening and closing them. HTHMars has 1000 lockers, all shut.

• Suppose the first student goes along the row and opens every locker.
• The second student then goes along and shuts every other locker beginning with locker number 2.
• The third student changes the state of every third locker beginning with locker number 3. (If the locker is open the student shuts it, and if the locker is closed the student opens it.)
• The fourth student changes the state of every fourth locker beginning with number 4.

Imagine that this continues until 1000 students have followed the pattern with the 1000 lockers. At the end, which lockers will be open and which will be closed? Which lockers have been switched the most often? How many lockers, and which ones, were touched exactly five times?

My students were posed with this problem. After two weeks of solving, writing, and revising, they posted their final solutions on their blogs. Read their blogs and learn about perfect squares, factors, and patterns!

What is Math? What is Physics?

Math and physics mean different things to different people because we all have different experiences. What is it for you? Create a blog post that addresses the following questions:

What does it mean to do math? What does math look like? Where do you find math? Who uses it?

What is physics? Are we doing physics? Where can you find it? Who uses it?

This post should be at least two paragraphs and include a picture. This picture should be an example of how you see or view math and/or physics.

30 Things You Didn't Know About Me

1. I dance hula.
2. I can speak Japanese.
3. I don't have a car.
4. I don't own a TV.
5. My favorite colors are green and brown.
6. I have a cat named Ruby. I think she's really a monkey disguised as a cat.
7. I love to knit and quilt.
8. I love reading Science Fiction.
9. I was born in the same hospital and went to the same high school as President Obama.
10. I played soccer in college (as a goalkeeper!).
11. I grew up catching my own rain water in a huge water tank in my yard.
12. I also grew up harvesting my own apple bananas.
13. My favorite vegetables are kabocha and renkon.
14. I love making ceramics.
15. I have never been out of the country.
16. I broke my collarbone twice playing football.
17. I am a thespian.
18. I love origami.
19. The first time I traveled East of CA was two years ago.
20. I eat a lot of rice.
21. I have seen the green flash twice.
22. My favorite impressionist artist is Degas.
23. I have slept through three earthquakes.
24. I have only seen snow twice.
25. I have caught, prepared, and eaten an octopus.
26. I visited four states outside of CA this summer.
27. I love the ocean (despite how cold it is on the mainland).
28. I love playing board games (chess, checkers, go, scrabble, othello).
29. I started doing yoga this summer.
30. My cousin is a ballerina.

That's Mathematics!

I can't wait till the first day of school on Monday. Here's a fun song that is so true about mathematics. It's all around us!

Perseid Meteor Shower

An annual meteor shower that occurs around mid-August so if you missed it last night you can catch it again next year!

Jury Duty aka Five Days of Fun?

I went to the Hall of Justice on August 3rd at 7:45am hoping and praying not to get selected for Jury Duty. (It was practically my last week of summer vacation!)

I got selected and served for five days on a civil trial that involved two tenants (the plaintiffs) suing their former landlord (the defendant) for a complete refund of rent and compensation due to pain and suffering. I'll be brief...the content of the case was not interesting. Even being a tenant myself I had a difficult time remaining engaged. However, the judiciary system itself was really really cool.

The real fun was being a witness to the system: observing how the lawyers interact with the judge, each other, their clients, and how each person in the courtroom has a part. I could not wait until deliberation. When the 12 jurors went into the deliberation room it sometimes felt like a scene from 12 Angry Men.

In the end, the plaintiffs got nothing. I, on the other hand, learned a lot about what it's like to be in court, how to reason with 11 strangers from varied backgrounds and have 9/12 of us come to an agreement. This was an interesting social experience and one that, for the most part, I thoroughly enjoyed.

I highly recommend everyone serving on a jury at least once in their lifetime.

My first blogging experience!

I'm at a teaching workshop/meeting in Philly. Saw a Phillies game and am now building my first Blog for Mysics class. I am extremely excited to start this blog for class this Fall. I'm learning more and more about it at this workshop and can't wait to get students involved in this blogging community.