• Books - Geometry - Math Education

    Mobius Strip Puzzles and a Mathematical Proof

    September 15, 2023 - By 

    Mobius strips are easy to make. Just glue one end of a strip of paper to the back side of the other end. Then you have a twisted strip. Lots of knitters make Mobius cowls as well. It’s a popular and cozy style. The author of some of the books I’ve used with students, mathematician Richard Evan Schwartz at Brown University, has been puzzling over a problem posed in the 1970s: what’s the shortest strip of paper you can use to make a Mobius strip? After a few years of tinkering, Dr. Schwartz cracked the problem. The key to doing…

  • Geometry - Math Education - School supplies - Singapore Math

    Fun With Blocks: Foundational Geometry

    September 1, 2012 - By 

    In the course of my teaching and tutoring experience, I’ve come across the fact that Americans often fall short of others in geometry1,2. Besides the fact of test scores, I see that in how difficult it is for bright high school students I tutor to grasp certain spatial concepts. In fact, I was recently tutoring one incoming tenth grader, and she was unable to visualize how many cubes were in a stack. Recently, I found these foam blocks in packs of 50 for $1.00 at Dollar Tree. I bought a bunch, and they have been so useful for my teaching…