The Challenge: Make yourself a 12-fold Islamic Geometric Rosette.
Materials needed: Compass, straight edge, paper, pencil, colors
Math Concept: angles, circles, geometric construction, geometry, Islamic geometry, lines, polygons, symmetry, tessellations, vertices/intersections.
The Challenge: Throw some random points (or carefully selected ones!) on a plane. Identify the parts of the plane that are closest to each of those points.
Materials Needed: Paper, ruler, writing utensil.
Math concepts you could explore with this challenge: algebra, arithmetic, geometry, lines, proportions/ratios, slope, tessellations, vertices/intersections.
The Challenge: Get yourself a square of paper (or something else?) and cut yourself a set of tangrams. Then create away!
Materials Needed: Scissors, paper
Math concepts you could explore with this challenge: angles, geometry, lines, polygons, proportions/ratios, symmetry, tessellations
The Challenge: Create this design, and then once you have the basic underlying grid, play around with the possible interpretations of how to color and “finalize” it.
Materials Needed: compass, straight edge, colors; could use graphing software.
Math concepts you could explore with this challenge: angles, circles, geometric construction, geometry, Islamic geometry, lines, symmetry, tessellations
The Challenge: Create the above tessellation using compass and straight edge or isometric grid paper.
Materials Needed: compass, straight edge, grid paper, possibly isometric paper. Math concepts you could explore with this challenge: angles, circles, geometric construction, geometry, Islamic geometry, lines, symmetry, vertices/intersections.
The Challenge: Create the tessellation above using a compass and straight edge.
Materials Needed: Compass, straight edge, possibly grid paper
Math concepts you could explore with this challenge: angles, circles, geometric construction, geometry, Islamic geometry, lines, symmetry, vertices/intersections.
The Challenge: Create all of the possible “stars” given a certain number of vertices.
Materials Needed: Pencil/paper
Math concepts you could explore with this challenge: angles, arithmetic, circles, combinations & permutations, lines, proportions/ratios, symmetry, vertices/intersections
The Challenge: Construct a rectangle using a compass.
Materials needed: Compass, straight edge, writing utensil
Math concepts you could explore with this challenge: angles, circles, geometric construction, geometry, lines, polygons, slope, symmetry, vertices/intersections
The Challenge: Build your own Hyperboloid
Materials needed: Skewers, Tiny rubber bands (I was able to get skewers at the grocery store and polybands from Target)
Math concepts you could explore with this challenge: Angles, geometric construction, lines, symmetry, topology, vertices/intersections
The Challenge: Drawing only straight lines where all lines must cross all other lines, how many can you draw?
Materials Needed: Paper, pencil, maybe a ruler.
Math concepts you could explore with this challenge: angles, calculus, lines, slope
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