Maths week begins on 17th October. Check out the website www.mathsweek.ie.

Using the Internet, can you find out about the following:

1. Fibonnacci numbers

2. The Towers of Hanoi

3. Fractals.

 

How many 2D shapes can you find in the yard?

 

 

Look at the pictures. What shapes can you see? Can you make a picture like these?

 

 

 

 

 

Make a mobius band.

Augustus Mobius was a German Mathematician, born in 1790, died 1868. He is famous for the curius surface known as a mobius band. You can make a mobius band by taking a strip of paper say 2cm wide and 20 cm long, bending it around until the ends meet, then twisting one end through 180 degrees, and finally gluing the ends together. For comparison, make a cylinder in the same way, leaving out the twist.

The Mobius band is famous for one surprising feature: it has only one side. You can check this by painting it. You can paint the cylinder so that one side is red and the other blue for example. But if you start painting the mobius band red and keep going until you run out of band to paint, the whole thing ends up red.

If you cut the cylinder along the middle with a scissors, it falls apart into two cylinders. What happens if you try this with a Mobius band?

Try this again and see what happens when you make the cut about one third of the way across the band width of both the cylinder and the Mobius band.

Try making a band like a Mobius band but with a 360 degree twist. How many sides does it have? What happens if you cut along the middle?