Ravi from asha came to teach us to make material for learning. Each and individual choose one topic to make material. We selected topic call percentage.
WORKING:
In that we have made a rectangle from the circumference of a circle with the radius 5cm ,total height of the rectangle is 31.4cm as same as the circumference of the circle, from that we have assumed it as the 100% so that we have combined the circle at the top rectangle and it is been measured with the thread from the top of rectangle so that students can imagine the percentage and we have used to calculate the various percentage.
Udayan (7th-grade child) was sent to me when I was taking a class for 4th grade in Isaiambalam. That is when I first met him. He was sent to learn basic maths and teachers said that he is weak and not able to follow the regular classes. He then learnt the multiplication table and basic operations in math.
I see him sometimes playing in the playground but he never came back to me asking help in learning mathematics.
I was busy working on an afternoon when he came with a few handmade pieces of work and was happy to show his work to me. Some of the children from Isaiambalam school was sent to a workshop called “Craft mela” to learn crafts in Auroville. I was amazed at his potential and how much he could do with his hands at such a small age. I then remembered the days in my school when I used to do soap carving with my craft teacher.
Each child is special in their unique way. They need the right kind of motivation and environment to blossom. This child has truly found his way.
Children from 8th in Udavi were learning about the powers and exponents. In order to demonstrate powers of three. I was thinking about how to make the cubes and I had a question of with what materials do I need to make.
Finally, I thought of making the cube using Dienes blocks. I took all the 10 cm rods and started. making making the cubes. I wanted to show 31 to 35.
I took a 10 cm rod and cut them into 3 pieces of 3 cm. I stuck them together to get 3^2. when I add three of the 3^2 I get 3^3.
This the visual representation of 3^1
This the visual representation of 3^2 This the visual representation of 3^3
This the visual representation of 3^4
This the visual representation of 3^5
Here are some simple rules to use with exponents.
a1 = a
Any number raised to the power of one equals the number itself.
For any number a, except 0, a0 = 1
Any number raised to the power of zero, except zero, equals one.
For any numbers a, b, and c,
ab x ac = ab+c
This multiplication rule tells us that we can simply add the exponents when multiplying two powers with the same base.
The above is a visualizing 3 power n in three dimensions. We did the same for two-dimension also.
We had a session with Ravi Alungati with all the teachers who work on Mathematics. Everyone chose their own topic that they are working on. Pratap and I chose powers since the eighth graders are working on it. We built these two dimensions of representation using the cardboard. We marked the cardboard cut them and painted them in alternate colors.
Two-dimension model for 3^2Two_dimenstion model for 3^3
Government school teachers from Cuddalore visited STEMland a couple of weeks back. Lakshmi who works for Tata consultancy was inspired by the model of STEmland and she has been engaging with us since then.
We are working on a project right now called “mobile STEMland”. The idea is to carry teaching materials from schools to schools and teach math and science (This is ongoing).
Lakshmi is also interested to implement the idea in a government school in Cuddalore. As part of this, the math teachers and the school Headmaster from the school visited us. Children and STEMland facilitators showed some of the projects they did and also briefly brainstormed what STEMland is about. As part of their visit, we also conducted a session for them on “Stand and Fears “(A tool from Stewardship programme).
For more info on Stewardship programme, please see
A non-Newtonian fluid is a fluid that does not follow Newton’s law of viscosity, i.e., constant viscosity independent of stress. In non-Newtonian fluids, viscosity can change when under force to either more liquid or more solid. [more..]
PREPARATION :
Preparation of the non Newtonian liquid:
Needed materials:
Corn powder (50 gm)
Water (50 ml)
Shampoo (5 ml)
Honey (1 table spoon)
Mix all the ingredients slowly and make sure you mix them properly. Mixing might be a little harder and might take around 10 to 15 minutes.
WORKING :
After the preparation of the liquid ,the surface looks like a liquid. When one puts a finger slowly into the liquid it will go inside. When we increase the speed of our hand our finger will not go inside. Please check the video below. We should this to the school children.
An interactive session was given to the young students of TLC about Pi, radius, diameter, area, and circumference. The class started with a brief introduction about each of the concept.
Later the students were asked to measure the circumference of the different objects that were given to them and which they found around them using a thread. The measured circumference was divided by the diameter of the same object, when divided they got some value near to 3.14. From this session they were able to understand that the value of Pi and it is constant. The students were engaged and practically understood the concept of Pi, which they enjoyed a lot.
This week me and Murali went to Aikiyam to teach shapes using scratch. We started with the drawing a straight line. Then asked children to draw a triangle . Children took some time and then figured out the angle to draw a triangle. Then we asked them to draw the following shapes like square, pentagon, hexagon, heptagon , octagon. Then using this shapes we asked then to draw mandala. Children were interested to draw their own mandalas . Children understood the concept of repeat loop. They were familiar with the pen function in the scratch. Children were able to connect the angles for different shapes.
We,8th graders at Isai Ambalam school children started a lesson called visualising solid shapes in mathematics. We used sodo cubes to understand different views of a solid shape. Children have been divided into four groups. 20 sodo cubes were given to each group. One child from each group should make a solid shape using 20 cubes and should draw the front view, side view and top view. He has to show this views to his partner without showing the shape.The other person should make the same model by seeing drawings. Children enjoyed this activity. They were able to draw the different views of solid shapes and also make the shapes by seeing the views. But the question they had was how to draw the views if the model has holes. Then they came to the conclusion of using dotted lines to represent the holes.
We had learnt to interface a toy DC motor with the arduino platform. The idea is to design a sensor controlled vehicle which navigates based on the intensity of the light which falls on it.
We used a LDR(Light Dependent Resistor) as a sensor element for the project. The analog value of intensity of the light falling on it is measured and it ranges from 0 – 1024 (10 bit resolution limitation of arduino). We used a dual H bridge IC named L293D to actuate the motor. To get the desired torque, we have selected a geared motor with 300 RPM @ 12VDC.
For this task we used only one geared motor and one half of the dual H Bridge. For initial prototyping we used the breadboard, the enable pin of one half of the IC is connected to 5VDC, two IOs are assigned namely 4 and 7 to control the outputs of the IC. The LDR is connected to the analog pin A0. The LDR circuit is designed as a voltage divider circuit. The analog value obtained from the task is compared continuosly with the threshold limit of 950. If the value is changed the motor will rotate in clockwise direction else in anticlockwise direction.
-Pratap & Logeshwari
