Parabolas

Although I have known the "idea" of a parabola for quite a long time, my first formal introduction to the concept came at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. An exhibit at the museum allowed you to adjust the angle of elevation, power, and other details on a machine which would launch a basketball across the museum depending on the numbers you plugged into the program. The goal was to get the ball to into the hoop on the other end, meaning you had to experiment with different combinations of numbers to find the angle and power that gave you the best parabola, to try and get the basketball in the hoop. As a little kid, I was so intrigued by this concept. After this experience, it was easy to realize that parabolas were everywhere, especially in sports (which is a relatively big part of my family). In soccer, when you kick the ball; in diving, when you take off of the board, and in many other sports, the concept of the quadratic function is vital. 

Here are some pictures to give a visual:

Regular Tessellations

What exactly is a tessellation?
A tessellation is when a shape is repeated over and over, covering a plane without any gaps. In a Euclidean plane, triangles, squares, and hexagons are the only regular polygons that can tessellate.

Why is it that there are only three regular tessellations?

This is because if you find the interior angle of a polygon, the angle measure must be a divisor of 360 degrees in order for the tessellation to occur without any gaps in-between. You can find the interior angle measure of a polygon by taking the total interior angle measure (ex: 180 degrees for a triangle, 540 degrees for a pentagon, etc..) and dividing that number by the number of sides the polygon has. If this number is a divisor of 360, then it is a regular tessellation. Interestingly, only triangles, squares, and hexagons produce these types of numbers- which is part of what makes them such unique and interesting shapes! 

Pascal's Triangle

Considering how amazing and neat Pascal's triangle is, I thought it would be nice to have some background on the mastermind that discovered this incredible tool. Blaise Pascal was born in 1623 in Clermont-Ferrand, Auvergne, France. Pascal was not only a mathematician, but also a physicist, inventor, and writer. Pascal was a child prodigy, and is known not only for his triangle, but also for "Pascal's Wager."

For more information on Pascal you can visit the following site:

http://www.biography.com/people/blaise-pascal-9434176

Pascal's Triangle is one of the most helpful and neat tools in math. In math class this far, we have learned that Pascal's triangle is formed by adding the two numbers above them to the left and right. Additionally, we have found Pascal's triangle to be extremely helpful with our expansions. Pascal's triangle has many neat little tricks to it. For example, if you add all of the numbers in each row together, it is equal to a power of 2 (2^3= 1=3=3=1=8). Additionally, if a row starts with a prime number that is not one (every row begins with 1), each number in that row is divisible by that number. The Fibonacci sequence can also be found in Pascal's triangle by adding the numbers in their diagonal rows consecutively. Doing this will give you the Fibonacci sequence.  Lastly, a cool trick of Pascal's triangle, is that if you take the sums of the rows horizontally, up until row 5, it will be equal to 11^n power, where n= the row number that you are in. It is important to note that the very first row is row 0, NOT row 1. With this pattern, when you arrive at row 6, the trick still works, but you have to do a little bit of different addition to get the same answer.

Math Humor

GA2- Miranda Martinez

Math Humor

Maybe it is because I go to the Academy, but I have noticed that since I started at the school in sixth grade, that I have heard countless math jokes and chemistry jokes. We chuckle and say, "only at academy," because it is so true and I doubt this sort of joking takes place at any other school to the magnitude in which it does at Albuquerque Academy. One of the most recent chemistry jokes that I have heard is, " What do you do with a dead chemist? Barium!" Math and Chemistry humor shines a different light on the subjects, one in which I enjoy, because it just goes to show how math is a part of everything we do in our everyday lives. You can not deny that no matter how cheesy or dumb the math joke is, they are always good for a chuckle! Some of the recent jokes I  discovered regarding some of our newly learned material is:

Why are you so negative?  Just take me for my absolute value! 

What did pi say to the imaginary number? "Get real. "But the imaginary number retorted, "Be rational."

"Why can't anyone see you"- the number eight
"Beats me"- Square root of negative one