accomplishments:

Math Final for my class half made up ...check

Water siphoned out of broken dishwasher ...check

Evil (and dirty) filter removed from heat pump intake ...check

Mushy avocado finished off ...check

Car cleaned out ...check

Clothes washed ...check

Futon taken off bed and put in spare room ...check

Airbed installed in bedroom ...check

Ice packs ready for tonight ...check

Recycling removed from porch ....hmm....

Lesson plan for class tomorrow ready ...sort of

Dining room table piled high with STUFF ...check

Oh, well.

Meta-Dodecahedron!

Today's topic at the Math Club meeting was "Building with Zome Tools", an idea of Dr. Harold Reiter, our illustrious founder. I have to admit I was a little skeptical of how this would work out, but it was wild and crazy and noisy and lots of fun for the students! Here's a photo* of the final product, a dodecahedron using "meta-balls" for the vertices:


It's interesting how there are such clear curves here -- there are NO curved pieces used in the construction! Even the connectors, little white "balls", have no curved edges.

Here's another view:



Minutes after these photos were taken, the dismantling of a couple hours' work began to be dismantled.

The students, making this creation, were as focused as I've ever seen them. It took the 32 or so students about 1.5-2 hours to make 16 of the meta-balls, and connect them together to make the dodecahedron. Teamwork, curiosity, determination, and playfulness were all plentiful! And they had energy enough left after the dismantling process to focus on another activity, a math relay from a past year's Duke Math Meet. Amazing.

The other really great thing that happened at this meeting was that the parents pitched in to help like more than I've ever seen them do. All in all, it was an inspiring morning, and gave me renewed enthusiasm for the Club.

*The photos are from my cell phone... Unfortunately, the battery for my real camera was at home, still in its charger. Clearly, I need to take pictures more often!

Sphere

First Math Club meeting for this school year went well yesterday, for the most part. My porch has new screens now. The office is emptier (the porch furniture is back where it belongs at last!) and I'm getting through some backlog of paperwork. Progress -- something to be happy about!
Oh, and about the title of this post: there is a lot more information here.

further searching for humor...

...turned up the following:

Factorials were someone's attempt to make math *look* exciting.
(I can add this to my post a few days ago on math humor)

And click the title above for a link to, finally, a moving story!

Okay, everybody can move back to Charlotte now...

It looks like we are going to get an IKEA store here! It won't be until 2009, but that will give everybody time to find a suitable place to live...with lots of room for furniture, bookshelves, picture frames, etc. Then we can all start learning interesting Swedish words. (Well, okay, some of you already had a head start on that!) The store will be in the University City area, and it will be the only IKEA between Washington and Atlanta. (Atlanta has an IKEA?)

In other news, it is precipitating here: sleet and freezing rain, what they daintily call "a wintry mix". It doesn't matter; we all know what they mean... we can hear it falling outside. It makes a whole different sound from rain as it bounces off the trees and roads and sidewalks, kind of a clicking/shushing noise. We always hope that isn't followed by the sound of tree limbs breaking under the weight of accumulated ice, but that isn't predicted to happen...this time. I'm missing my morning walk -- don't want to break any more limbs -- but will be working my usual Thursday schedule. Schools are in session, except for a few of the private and church schools.

NEWS FLASH (7:20 a.m.) -- there's a 12-vehicle accident on the ramp from I-77 to I-485! And I think they just said Independence Blvd. is closed because of ice. Things are sounding worse.

MORE NEWS FLASH!!! History in the making: "Laundry Math" is invented in Charlotte!

VerizonMath

Just in case anyone missed it, there's a math furor going on this weekend on the web (click on post title) over possible false advertising by Verizon. The timing is great -- I'm in the middle of a chapter on "Unit Analysis" with my problem solving class... I hope somebody asks me "why do we have to study this stuff", but I know they won't -- they love the course. So I'll just bring the transcript for show-and-tell.

We have the best time in this class -- last week someone asked me to explain my t-shirt so we got into discussions of primes (front of shirt) and binary numbers (back of shirt), and they hung in there with me to the end. A great bunch, mostly math phobic but I think that is changing!

btw, anybody have a digital photo of the shirt they could share? Please send it on!!