Math Trailblazers and Their Modern Day Connections
There are many ways to connect math with topics that interest your children.
By Jacqueline Dwyer
It’s been my experience that students develop a greater appreciation of math if they can relate its significance to their own lives. Thus, when it came to teaching my own child about math trailblazers, men and women whose accomplishments made invaluable contributions to our world, I wanted to present them in a way that he found relevant and interesting.
Math In Animation
We began with a subject that is close to my son’s heart, animated movies. First, we investigated the contributions of Euler, Archimedes and Descartes. My son made a timeline for each of their lives. Next, he researched Disney Pixar movie animators. He was surprised to discover that many of Pixar's animators are mathematicians, not artists. My son returned to his timeline, extending it to include movie stills with captions that incorporate specific areas of geometry, trigonometry, algebra, and calculus. He was fascinated to learn that math is needed to bring characters and backgrounds to life.
Connecting Music and Math
At this point, my son’s interest was piqued. Since he is passionate about music, I suggested that we investigate both historic and modern day connections between math and music. We began by studying Euclid. When we looked at the Euclidean Algorithm, we found that it could compute the greatest common divisor of two numbers. It also generates almost all of the most important musical rhythms used throughout the world. It was fascinating to discover that we can take an abstract, symbolic concept such as an algorithm and apply it to a literal, kinesthetic one, like dancing. We used Euclid's algorithm to create our own movement patterns, such as the Waltz, which is based on a pattern of threes. My son choreographed a dance using graph paper to draw co-ordinates for the steps. He also made pairs of feet out of paper and positioned them on the floor, giving them both cardinal and ordinal numbers as he went. Then, he listened to a selection of music genres and marked the rhythms of each on a piece of paper. He finished by making a Venn diagram, showing how different genres can intersect in terms of rhythm. I realized that when teaching math, it is customary to move from the concrete to the symbolic; yet here we were dancing, and reversing the process by turning the symbolic into the concrete. All of this, thanks to Euclid. Below are some wonderful lessons that illustrate the connection between famous mathematicians their mathematical contributions to modern day life.
Math Trailblazers Lesson Plans:
Discovering Math: Concepts in Geometry
Research, write reports, and create posters of famous mathematicians using print and Internet resources.
Illustrate acquired knowledge of mathematicians and their contributions by making a timeline. In addition, students may combine their research into a class book and build a model of each mathematician's concept.
Classify a wide range of shapes by their spatial features. Students can construct polyhedra using everyday materials.
Students investigate the Stomachion - an ancient tangram-like puzzle. They learn about symmetry and transformations, and use the process to create other figures.