July 12, 2005

Bob Panoff (Bob1) began the day by showing the students a jar of tomato sauce filled with water. He then asked the students to examine the jar and tell him if this jar had been tampered with. Even though the safety button was down, which is usually a good indicator that the contents were safe, clearly it wasn't enough to prove that it was safe. He then split the class into teams of four and gave each one a box of Food Lion plastic straws. Bob1 challenged them to what was in the box without opening them. After studying the boxes they determined that each box contained 40 red and white straws, 19.4 cm long, and 62 millimeters wide. However, once they opened the boxes they found that there were either more or less than 40 straws and that the length and width varied as well. Another example in being certain what you read is accurate. After disproving everything on a few other brands of straws, Bob1 introduced the ideal gas law, PV = NRT, and an applet that created a random model of an ideal gas. The students analyzed the model and used it to prove the ideal gas law.

After snack the students each received a length of rope. They were all asked to come up with a way to model something using their piece of rope. Eventually they were able to model everything from mathematical formulas to snakes and airplanes. Bob1 even disproved a theorem that is impossible to tie a knot in a piece of rope without letting it go. Next the students used the computers to model a town. They had to design roads from one house to all the building without crossing the roads. Once they had done this the built a second house and then a third house. Bob offered $100 to any student who could complete the exercise for all three houses. None of them could.

Their next activity involved creating a chart of the letters that can be drawn without lifting your pencil and not going back over a line. They created a theorem that only letters with zero or two odd vertices could be drawn. Then they applied this theorem to the town model and discovered that, when drawn with lines crossing, there sere six odd vertices, meaning that it was impossible to draw the roads from the three houses without crossing.

After lunch, Bob1 introduced Matt DesVoigne, a staff member at Shodor and the days guest speaker. Matt introduced himself and told the student a little about himself and his role at Shodor.

When Matt had finished they moved into an activity on collective modeling. These models dealt with the spreading of factors like colds, accents, radioactivity, or the passing of a baton in a relay race. The models they built dealt with factors that were only passed onto people nearby. Using the Interactivate Fire!! activity the students changed factors like the fires origin and the probability of a tree catching on fire.

After snack the class went into the topic of iterations. After a brief description they engaged in a hands-on activity. They used Excel to make iterations to form a 3D model that can be rotated and viewed from multiple sides.