Math-elites Win 2nd 4th Place at PBAU

Seminole Ridge students had a fourth-place finish at the annual Palm Beach Atlantic University high school mathematics and computer science competition on Saturday, November 09, 2013. Teams of teenagers from across Martin and Palm Beach County attended the calculating contest, from Port St. Lucie Centennial to Spanish River were among the scores of students solving real-world problems. And for the second consecutive year, the Hawks finished in the top tier.

The team members lead by Captain Sam Smith are math whizzes from the school’s SECME engineering and MAθ (Mu Alpha Theta) math honor society. During the competition, students solved three sets of paper and pencil problems in algebra, trigonometry, statistics, probability, and pre-calculus problems using Texas Instruments graphing calculators.

The team from Suncoast High School in Riviera Beach was declared champion of the 3-hour competition Coach Kay Mathews, science teacher for Biology, is proud of the Hawks' honorable mention.

Volunteering at the PBAU math competition are former Seminole SECME students and recent graduates Andrea Olave and Priscilla Cerqueira

Banner Brainstorm: a smART stART to inspire ART imagination

Click on the banner brainstorm template PDF. It may be useful starting point to plan the SECME banner. I give each student a copy of the banner brainstorm and let them work out their ideas of placement, proportion, and use colored pencils. Here's a banner brainstorm template that opens in Microsoft Word for editting.

If someone tells you to write a poem on a piece of paper, it helps you when they say specifically make it a sonnet of 14 lines and an alternative abab rhyme schem. It's a lot easier to ensure the quality of the end product. So when beginning the banner with Seminole SECME, I share the following mathematical concepts. You might find them interesting:

BrainPOP: Scale Drawing
Like to draw in a big way? In this BrainPOP movie, Tim and Moby show you how to resize images and use scale drawing to make pictures larger and smaller! They’ll guide you through a sample problem to help you figure out how to use ratios to find the scale of your original image and that of the final product. You’ll also see what can happen if your height and width scales are different. Lastly, you’ll discover how using a grid can help you keep things nice and neat. Anyone can be an artist!
Watch the Math movie about Scale Drawing


BrainPOP: Proportions Losing your sense of proportion? Regain it with this BrainPOP movie, as Tim and Moby teach you all about ratios or proportions! You’ll find out how to figure out the price of a movie ticket in proportion to average monthly income — and how to compare it to prices from earlier decades. You’ll also learn how to set up a proportion problem, including where to put the ‘x’ and how to cross-multiply in order to get the right answer. Finally, you’ll see how proportions can be used in any number of real-life situations!
Watch the Math movie about Proportions

[ED NOTE: post originally published September 11, 2009. Revised March 18, 2013]

Pi to 314 Places

In celebration of Pi Day at Seminole Ridge High School in Loxahatchee, FL, students in Mu Alpha Theta math honor society and SECME engineering club have decorated the courtyard in chalk around the circumference of the circular planters with the digits of pi to 314 places.

Pi Day is an annual celebration commemorating the mathematical constant π (pi) -- the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Pi Day is observed on March 14 (or 3/14 in month/day date format), since 3, 1 and 4 are the three most significant digits of π in the decimal form.

How to Teach the Metric System

Palm Beach Atlantic U. Math Competition

Below is a link to a diagram of the Palm Beach Atlantic Campus. The contest will be in the second floor of #24 on the map. Guides will be there to direct you to the registration area. Parking could be in the lot on the corner of Dixie and Pembroke, west of #24, in the lot just east of #24 off Okeechobee Blvd, or in the Parking Garage at the corner of Dixie and Pembroke. The gate code for the parking garage is two-two-four-six-star. Registration will begin Saturday morning at 8:00 am, with introductions and directions starting at 8:30 am. There will be coffee, juice, and muffins/danish available from 8-8:30. Also, lunch will be provided after the third and final round of the contest. Calculators are permitted, but cellphones need to be turned off and not used during testing. I look forward to seeing you and your students on Saturday morning.

https://a248.e.akamai.net/akamai-cache.trustedpartner.com/docs/library/PalmBeachAtlanticUniversity2010/PDFS/Parents%20Council/NewMap1.pdf

Dr. Steve Selby
Mathematics and Computer Science Department Chair
Palm Beach Atlantic University

EF2D: Maps, Math, Magnets and Mars

Seminole Ridge SECME inspired an interest in the areas of science, engineering and math during the fifth annual Engineering Family Fun Day was held Saturday, November 3rd in Dreher Park, in West Palm Beach. Students and their families, teachers and counselors enjoyed a fun-filled, free educational event focusing on opportunities available in engineering. Each of the eight sponsored booth presented a hands on engineering related activity by which the students, parents, and engineers can interact with each other. For example, the Water Bottle Rocket involves aerospace engineering.

Last year, Seminole Ridge SECME students challenged children to learn the physics of projectiles by making a popfly launcher with paint stirrers, a PVC pipe coupler and a ping pong ball. The mini-catapults were sponsored in part by Lowe's Home Improvement of Royal Palm Beach, store #0654.

This year, SECME students senior Sam Smith and his brother freshmen Nick Smith, and coach Erich Landstrom invited event attendees to learn a little more about maps, math, magnets and Mars, by becoming “Inspector Detectors”.

Families had to make a magnetic field detector from simple objects like steel wool, scissors, and scraps of cardboard. They used their magnetometers to map for the magnetic anomalies, like the upcoming MAVEN mission to the planet Mars. People who correctly predicted the locations of magnets hidden beneath a model of Mars received a passport stamp and a piece of candy. The "Inspector Detector" activity was adapted from the upcoming “Beyond the Moon” guide written for NASA by the PBS show Design Squad.

The Society of Women Engineers Southeast Florida Section and the Palm Beach Alumni Extension of the National Society of Black Engineers are co-hosts.  The goal is to inspire an interest in the areas of STEAM (science, technical, engineering, artistry and math) fields in students in grades four through 12.
 

20121103 EF2D

(Click on the first picture to flip through a photostream of Seminole SECME at Engineering Family Fun Day 2012)

Moneyville at CSX

Children’s Science Explorium’s new exhibit now open!

The new traveling exhibit Moneyville is now open! Moneyville uses the fascinating subject of money to build math skills and promote economic literacy in a fun and immersive urban landscape. Moneyville is open through January 13 during regular Explorium hours. There is a suggested donation of $5 per person www.ScienceExplorium.org.

Math Midway at MODS

Museum of Discovery and Science, Fort Lauderdale, FL

January 26 through May 5, 2013

The Math Midway begins 2013 with a first-time appearance in Florida at the Museum of Discovery and Science, a museum with more than 200 interactive science exhibits.



Dive into a world of mathematics with the highly interactive exhibit Math Midway. Students will be learning math as they pedal a smooth-riding, square-wheeled tricycle; create interesting pen and ink drawings using the Mysterious Harmonograph; or produce a distinct calliope tune with the Organ Function Grinder. Math Midway offers a plethora of enlightening and fun mathematical puzzles —all while learning the science behind each unique exhibit.

Can You KenKen?

KenKen is a logic puzzle that involves arithmetic. Similar to SuDoku, KenKen will exercise your mind as you fill in the blanks. KenKen is a game that helps students improve their calculation skills, logical thinking and persistence. The goal is to fill a grid with numbers so that no number appears more than once in any row or column. In addition, the numbers must combine to form a target number using a specific operation of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

KenKen logic puzzles were first invented in Japan by Tetsuya Miyamoto, promoted as “Kashikoku Naru Puzzle” or the "Makes You Smarter" puzzle. With the main goal to improve students’ cognitive abilities in mind, he developed a brain stimulating exercise that would be understandable, fun and challenging for students of all levels.

KenKen emphasizes logical thinking and problem solving in the context of basic operations. The math puzzle improves numeracy skills and logical thinking, and develops concentration, perseverance and stamina. The puzzle’s universality, with an array of difficulty levels and no language, gender or age requirements, allows all students the chance to participate.

The puzzle is used to teach Common Core mathematical processes and is prominently featured on the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics' Illuminations website. (NCTM is the world's largest organization devoted to math education). KenKen puzzles can also be played for free at http://www.KenKen.com.

The KenKen Classroom Program (KKCR) is a weekly set of puzzles that range in size from 3x3 to 5x5 grids, with two 6x6 teamwork puzzles, sent as PDF to teachers once a week, usually on Sundays. The puzzle sets are carefully selected to ensure that they are fit for all class levels and skill levels, from gifted children as well as for students with learning disabilities!

Rules for KENKEN
1. Every square in the grid will contain one number. In a 4 x 4 puzzle, use the numbers 1–4. In a 5 x 5 puzzle, use the numbers 1–5.
2. Each row and each column must contain the numbers 1 through 3 (easy) or 1 through 5 (challenging). Do not repeat numbers in any row or column.
3. A cage is a heavily outlined set of squares. Every cage has a target number in the upper left corner. The numbers in the squares inside a cage must combine to produce the target number using the given operation in any order to produce the target numbers in the top-left corners.
4. Freebies: Cages with just one square should be filled in with the number in the top-left corner. This is a good place to start solving the puzzle.



KENKEN and the Common Core CCSS.Math.Content.HSA-CED.A.1 Create equations and inequalities in one variable and use them to solve problems.
CCSS.Math.Content.HSA-CED.A.4 Rearrange formulas to highlight a quantity of interest, using the same reasoning as in solving equations.

Seminole SECME 'Hawk Talk' newsletter August 2012

In the Autumn 2012 issue of the Seminole SECME 'Hawk Talk'  newsletter

- Obama Calls Curiosity landing at Mars' Gale Crater "Examples of American know-how and ingenuity...really an amazing accomplishment"
- Mechanical Mayhem at the Museum of Discovery and Science in Ft. Lauderdale
- Figure This! Metric Mathletes - Can Athletes Run Faster Than Cars
- Save the Date!
Wednesday, August 22, 2012 at 3 PM —Seminole SECME Demo Day. New recruits welcome to join!
Saturday, September 8, 2012 at 10 AM-“Robot” Car Wash fundraiser at Burger King
- SECME Spotlight on Captain Sam Smith
- XCKD.COMics “1050—Algebra”
- Hawks Solve to the Fourth Place at PBAU Math Competition

Click here to download the attached PDF copy of our Seminole SECME 'Hawk Talk' newsletter Autumn 2012 issue

Hawk Talk Autumn 2012

PBAU Math and MODS VEX

Click on the first picture to flip through the photoalbum of Seminole Ridge SECME on Saturday, May 12, 2012 at the Palm Beach Atlantic University mathematics and computer science competition. In Fort Lauderdale, Coach Landstrom, Bert Sivongsay, and Jesse Mendheim demonstrated VEX Robotics at the Museum of Discovery and Science.

Seminole Ridge students Samuel Smith, Mitch Vasquez, Jaret Rimel, Seham Ahmed, and Keith Miner participated in the 4th annual Palm Beach Atlantic University mathematics and computer science competition on Saturday, May 12, 2012. Nine high school teams from Boca Raton to Ft. Pierce attended the competition.

The team members are math whizzes from the school’s SECME engineering and MAθ (Mu Alpha Theta) math honor society. During the competition, students solved three sets of paper and pencil problems in algebra, trigonometry, statistics and pre-calculus problems using Texas Instruments graphing calculators.

The team from Atlantic Community High School in Delray Beach was declared champion of the 3-hour competition. Atlantic’s 5-member winning team consisted of seniors Hayden Jansen (also winner of the Pathfinder Award in Mathematics), Michael Klionsky (Valedictorian), Gowri Nayar, Hanif Ahmed and Benny Tom. Atlantic’s winning team members won TI-Nspire graphing calculators and $375 in gift certificates to Best Buy. It was the second competition championship for Atlantic in the last three years of the competition.

Following Atlantic in 2nd place was the team from Suncoast Math/Science/Engineering (MSE) Magnet School. Seminole Ridge finished behind Suncoast and Atlantic High Schools, for a fourth place finish, and received $10 gift cards to Best Buy. Coach Ed Batchelor, math teacher for Algebra 2 and Geometry Honors, is proud of their honorable mention.

-----

Meanwhile, it was mechanical mayhem at the Museum of Discovery and Science in Ft. Lauderdale on May 12th as mentors and high school students from engineering programs teamed up for robotic demonstrations. Seminole Ridge students Bert Sivongsay and Jesse Mendheim showcased VEX Robotics, with the school's "The Iron Dragon v3" running a maze and manipulating Gateway game elements of barrels, balls, and rings.

Other teams from West Broward, American Heritage, and Cypress Bay showcased FIRST Robotics (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) shooting hoops in the "Rebound Rumble"

VEX and FIRST programs are designed to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders, by engaging them in exciting mentor-based programs that build science, engineering and technology skills, that inspire innovation, and that foster well-rounded life capabilities including self-confidence, communication, and leadership

Mayim Bialik teams up with TI to inspire science and math educators and students

As TI-Nspire™ CX technology’s new brand ambassador, Mayim Bialik – actress ("The Big Bang Theory"), scientist and author – and Texas Instruments hope to inspire teens to pursue Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) in their studies and future careers.

The partnership is a perfect match between TI, a longtime advocate of STEM initiatives that drive innovative education programs for students and teachers, and Bialik, who holds a Ph.D. in neuroscience from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and is passionate about math and science education.

Watch announcement video

Figure This! Every Second Counts When It’s Leap Day

Why do we have leap year in 2012, but not in 2011 or 2013? The issue is the length of time it takes the Earth to circle the sun. There is no reason in nature to expect the length of the year for a planet to be divisible evenly by its length of the day, but this failure has created a challenge for calendars throughout history. To account for the fact that it takes Earth 365.242196 days to orbit the sun, the ancient Roman implemented a system by which every fourth year would have an extra day (366 instead of 365). This “leap day” falls on the last day of February in 2012, as it did in 2008 and will in 2016, but not in-between. Later, during the Renaissance, this system was made more precise by omitting one leap day every four centuries; we leap a leap year if it is evenly divisible by 100 but not 400 (like 2100), giving us the "Gregorian" calendar that is now used throughout the world.

Figure this! On average, how many seconds does the month of February have? Assume a day is 24 hours (it isn’t but that’s for another column). Since 3,600 seconds are in an hour, 3600 × 24, or 86,400 seconds are in a day. But the answer isn’t an average of 2,419,200 seconds!

Hint: February usually has 28 days, except during leap years, when it has 29 days.

Get Started: In a 400-year span, how many leap versus non-leap Februarys occur?

Figure This! On the 12th+11th+10th Day of Christmas

On the first day of Christmas, my true love sends to me a partridge in a pear tree. On the 2nd day, my love sends two turtle doves and a partridge in pear tree. On the 3rd day, three french hens, two turtle doves, and a partridge in pear tree. This pattern continues for nine more days. The remaining gifts, in order of appearance, include colly birds, gold rings, geese, swans, maids, ladies, lords, pipers, and drummers. Figure this! After 12 days, which gift did my true love send the most?

Hint: How many of each gift did I receive on each day?
Get Started: Make a table to organize this information.


Answer in the comments!

Registration now open for Moody’s Mega Math Challenge 2012

Moody’s Mega Math Challenge is an Internet-based, applied math competition for high school students. The contest is free and open to high school juniors and seniors in 29 states in the Eastern United States.

Working in teams of three to five, participants must solve an open-ended, applied math-modeling problem focused on a realistic issue—in 14 hours. Scholarships totaling $115,000 toward the pursuit of higher education are awarded to the top teams. The real-world focus of the competition introduces students to applied math as a powerful problem-solving tool and, potentially, as a viable and exciting profession.

Challenge weekend is set for March 3 and 4, 2012. Register at the website below.

Complete details, sample problems, and archives of previous Challenges are available at: http://M3Challenge.siam.org

[Please feel free to include the above blurb in your e-newsletters, listserv messages, and/or websites] Karthika Muthukumaraswamy, Project Public Awareness
Moody's Mega Math Challenge http://M3Challenge.siam.org m3challenge[at]siam[dot]org

Lady Liberty

Happy 125th Anniversary to the The Statue of Liberty! Liberty Enlightening the World is a colossal neoclassical sculpture in New York Harbor, designed by Frédéric Bartholdi and dedicated on October 28, 1886.

CLICK HERE to revisit November's math challenge to figure this:
The right arm of the Statue of Liberty is 42 feet long. How long is her nose?

Power of 10 Day

In 1977, Charles and Ray Eames made a nine-minute film for IBM called Powers of Ten that still has the capacity to expand the way we think and view our world. Starting with a sleeping man at a picnic, the film takes the viewer on a journey out to the edge of space and then back into a carbon atom in the hand of the man at the picnic, all in a single shot. It is an unforgettable experience.

Each October 10th, the Eames Office celebrates Powers of Ten Day to promote and share this method of viewing ideas from an infinitesimal to a cosmic perspective.

MATH GIRLS

MATH GIRLS is a YA novel, both teen romance & intro to higher mathematics; "like Glee for math nerds" said one reviewer. It's been translated from the Japanese by Bento Books.

It starts with a lonely female freshman on her first day of high school. Her escape is advanced mathematics. She tunes out the principal and starts think about her age as factorals (15 = 3x5, 16=2^4, 17 is a prime number). And then, she meets Miruka. And Tetra.

The math is good and the book covers a wide variety of topics in mathematics, from basics like how letters are assigned as variable names to quite challenging problems like finding a general term for the sequence of integer partition numbers.

Judge for yourself. The first two chapters available as a sample. Download the sample PDF here: Math Girls Chapters 1 & 2

Graduation Exam v1895

Yesterday, at the Palm Beach Atlantic University High School Mathematics Competition, I had a chance to scroll through the questions on the HP tablet. The first problem seemed vaguely familiar to me:

A wagon box is 2 feet deep, 10 feet long, and 3 feet wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold? One busehel = 2150.42 cubic inches.

So I copied it down to Google it later, and sure enough, I had seen it, but not where you might expect:

This is the 8th grade final exam from 1895 from Salina, Kansas. It was taken from the original document on file at the Smoky Valley Genealogical Society and Library in Salina, Kansas, and reprinted by the Salina Journal.

It makes the rounds on teh internets, with the sender or poster or blogger usually commenting something along the lines of "Imagine a college student who went to public school trying to pass this test today, even if the few outdated questions were modernized." (but not always; thanks, snopes.com for having faith).

Well, I can imagine, because our students did. Our Hawks from SECME and Mu Alpha Theta got up early on a Saturday morning and drove an hour, to competed in a mathematics tournament. These math-elites rock at a level of Mount Rushmore level of awesomeness. Take a second to recognize:

• Captain Caitlin Miller,



• Duncan Miller,



• Yiro Shimabukoro,



• Joe Pavicic,



• Arnold Juan Banner,



• and alternates Ronit Liberman and Edwin Keo

And students from MAθ:

• Raquel Redondo,
  
  
• Robyn Exclusa,
  
  
• Summer Roque,
  
  
• Mitch Vasquez
  
  
• Joe Swierzko-Vickers
  
  
• along with Dr. Mary Jo Murray, of the Seminole Ridge High Math Department
  

Here some other questions they tackled:

(8 pts) Solve:
+x -4y - 4z - 3u = -4
-3x + 0y +4z + 2u = -13
+2x - 2y + 2z + 0u = 10
-5x + 2y + 1z + 0u = 16


(4 pts) Suppose a 250-lb parent climbs a muddy 45 degree hill. Calculate the force tending to make the parent slide down the muddy hill.
[A SOLUTION IS HERE, but my students converted into kilograms and answered in Newtons, because that's how we roll in Physics).

Math Days 2011

This is a reminder that the 3rd annual Palm Beach Atlantic University High School Mathematics Competition will be held on Saturday May 15, 2011 at PBAU from 8am – 1pm. Our Seminole SECME of 5 students from each school will compete using HP tablet computers and solve problems involving: Algebra, Trigonometry, Statistics and Pre-Calculus.

Click maps for directions.