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April 2011

What's New?

 

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Lesson in ActionSee BLOSSOMS in the Classroom
Watch the Statistics class of John Bookston at Arlington High School in Arlington, MA study the “Broken Stick Problem” with MIT Professor Richard Larson.

New BLOSSOMS Video Lesson - “Gravity at Work”
gravity at workThis title comes from a fascinating example of two laborers working at a construction site in Pakistan, where one man throws a brick from the ground level up to another worker on an upper floor. A projectile thrown upward at a given angle makes a trajectory similar to a parabola. When the projectile attains the maximum height, it becomes weightless for an instant, and this point of maximum height depends on the angle of throw. Watch the video.
Pythagoras Was No Square: A Challenge for Geometry Classes
PythagorasSee a high school math teacher from Jordan show how the wondrous Pythagorean Theorem applies in all sorts of places, like helping a juice seller! Dimensionality rules as repeatedly we see novel examples where the sum of two squares equals the square of a related 3rd quantity. Watch the video.
MIT BLOSSOMS at Math and Science Conferences
BLOSSOMS presented at the March 30th conference of the Association of Math Teachers of Massachusetts (ATMIM) and on April 30th at the Rhode Island Science Teachers Association (RISTA).
Look for these Math Lessons Coming Soon to BLOSSOMS

Geometry and the Topology of Three-Dimensional Solids

baseballThe Mathematics of Baseball

Connections in the Plane without Crossing

Tessellation: The Mathematics of Tiling

Meet a BLOSSOMS
video teacher
Darren TanDarren Tan is the Science Samurai. After graduating from Princeton University, he was a physics lecturer and tutor at Pioneer Junior College in Singapore for several years and is currently doing policy work in higher education for the Ministry of Education in that country. Darren created the “Science Samurai” persona since he sees himself as “a defender of the honor of science.” While teaching, he earned a reputation for using common objects in an uncommon way to demonstrate scientific concepts. Many of Darren’s science demonstrations were recorded and uploaded on YouTube. He believes that ”learning does not stop after class and that students can conduct the demonstrations themselves and spread enthusiasm for science to their friends.” Watch his BLOSSOMS video: “The Physics of Boomerangs”.