Hi Everyone,
I'm watching this discussion with great interest. DS8 (4th grade) came home with two very long pages of math homework (double sided) that were simplistic in math level, but required a great deal of handwriting and time. I just had to shake my head and wonder. How many times has he seen line segments, geometric shapes (parallelograms vs quadrangles), and simple addition and subtraction? And why does he need to write paragraphs about how he answered the questions?
He raced through them only because I dangled a carrot in front of his nose. If he completed the meaningless worksheets quickly, then there would be time before dinner for him to watch a video called "Fractals The Colors of Infinity". It was an amazing video which described the discovery of the Mandelbrot set by a mathematician at IBM in 1980(?). The pictures are stunning, it does an amazing job of explaining fractals, and it is hosted by Arthur C. Clarke. It even has Stephan Hawking in it!
Here is a link that I found for watching the movie on your computer:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8570098277666323857So our dinnertime conversation tonight included imaginary number and what would happen if you changed the equation from Z=z^2 + c to Z=z^3 + C. (they go through the first equation in the movie.) After dinner we also downloaded a computer program that allowed DS to play with his own parameters in graphing the Mandelbrot set:
(for a mac)
http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Math-Scientific/Mandelbrot-on-Cocoa.shtml(for a pc)
http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Best/mandelbrot-pc.htmlI haven't tried the pc version, but the mac version was great. And free.
Just remember... If you can't join them, then beat them.
