The annual 7th grade Great Mathematicians project is underway. Dr. Sabrina Goldberg's students are currently fleshing out faux profiles for their assigned mathematician on The Social Network, our in-house social network powered by Elgg. This year, Don Buckley and I are asking kids to distill their mathematician into a graphic to be used on their digital profiles and on their physical poster.

Examples:
DeCartes - Cartesian Plane
Newton - gravity, apple
Tesla - electric current, lightbulb, or lightning bolt
Erno Rubik - Rubik's cube

 

I'm working with Catherine Hildebrandt on an activity that incorporates 3D printing into a 6th grade Geometry unit.

Catherine and her 6th graders were examining polygons, prisms, cylinders, spheres, surface area, and volume anyway. So, we thought we'd have kids design shapes, measure surface area and volume, and print out their creations on our Makerbot and Bits From Bytes 3D printers to pass around for their classmates to measure.

Catherine chose to use Google Sketchup for this project, as it is easy to construct an infinite out of shapes using the tool, and it is super easy to set the measurements/distance for lengths in the bottom right toolbox of the SketchUp window. I'd initially suggested Tinkercad, but for this project, I deferred to Catherine's preference (especially after she spent quality time trying out each program).

Sabrina Goldberg is the 7th grade Math Teacher at The School at Columbia University. She has a classic project she initiates every year with her students:

Box Project

A rectangular box is made by folding an cutting an 8"x10" shet of paper. The Flap EF equals the height AB of the box.

EF + ED + DC + BC + AB = 10"

DC + CR + RS = 8"

Parameters:

The 8"x10" sheet of paper costs $4.00.

It cost $0.02 per inch to cut the paper.

You can sell scrap paper at $0.06 per square inch.

It costs $0.20 per inch to tape up the corners.

You can sell the finished box for $0.30 per cubic inch.

Make such a box with a depth of 1.5 inches.

If you make cut AB = 1.5 inches, find:

volume of the box

cost of the cuts

value of the scraps

selling price of the box

profit

surface area of the box outside, not including the flap

Build expressions above using AB = x inches