curriculum & activities

Polyrhythms
In the Polyrhythms problem students will be investigating polyrhythms and then have a chance to build their own to investigate the mathematics.

Fractris
The Fractris activity asks students to use different combinations of fractions that sum to 1 in a Tetris-like game setting.

Fish Farm I
The first Fish Farm problem is designed to have students apply the concepts of ratio and equivalent ratio to distribute a set number of male and female fish into three ponds.

Fish Farm II
In the second Fish Farm, students sample fish to determine the (unknown) male-female ratio in a pond.

Rumors
In Rumors, students are asked to predict what the graph of a real-world situation (spreading a rumor) will look like as compared to a controlled situation (only one person spreading a rumor).

Rock, Paper, Scissors
ePOW about probablitily and fairness in four parts:

Week 1: students run a simulation of the Rock, Paper, Scissors game where they can vary the number of trials and comment on its fairness.

Week 2: students run a simulation of two player Rock, Paper, Scissors where one player generates throws randomly, while the other one only throws a Rock for every trial.

Week 3: students use a three-player simulation of Rock, Paper, Scissors. The game rules state that the first player receives 1 point if all three players display the same hand arrangement; the second player receives 1 point if all three players display different hand arrangement; and the third player receives 1 point if just two players display the same hand arrangement. They are asked which of the three players will win the game.

Week 4: students play with the three-player game of Rock, Paper, Scissors and try to assign point values to each of the rules above to make it a fair game.

Pi Machine
ePOW about pi and other geometrical properties of circles and spheres in four parts:

Week 1: students use a simulation to approximate pi by estimating the ratio of darts thrown randomly at a dart board that land inside the circle to those that land outside.

Week 2: students investigate the relation between the radius and area of circles using a simulation with two concentric circles

Week 3: students experiment with the length of the radius of the inner circle so that half of the points fall inside the inner circle, and the other half fall in the outer circle.

Week 4: students use a simulation of a fish swimming in a spherical bowl to get an estimate for pi.