Don's Math Room - 5 views
1. The table about which expectations are high, the students are all different, we study, ask questions, look for patterns, visualize the math, graph functions, read, play a game like Nim, or Conway's "The Game of Life" or "Racetrack", learn to learn, think about the math, look at a sunflower stalk, and do a problem different ways. Whereas some people have been known to "stand and deliver", a student once told Don he sits and listens- and we have fun!
2. Don's watercolor painting of a horse farm in KY. A photograph of Martin Luther King is at upper left but not seen here, and photos of former students.
3. Bookcases- with math dictionaries, Martin Gardner's books, W.W. Sawyer's books, books from Russia, AHME problem books, Polya's books on problem solving, textbooks from Japan, Korea, Thailand, Germany, UK, & US, SAT, ACT, AP Calc prep books, AHME test problem books, biographies of Ramanujan and M.C. Escher, Space Mathematics, a Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, +, Don's sons' art works, real shells, patterns with Cuisenaire rods, a model of a giraffe, Kathryn's 2 paintings given to Don, ways students cut a square into 2 congruent pieces, a Hoberman sphere, part of a great stellated dodecahedron made by Don, a scale in kgs, +, -, *, / & 100 cards, Napier's bones, a chalkboard,+
4. The ceiling - which show patterns on a 12-dot circle, on 36-dot circle, tessellations using gummed shapes from Scotland, enlargements using a pantograph, a Pythagorean tree like some made at I.E.S., drawing made from a linkage, Bucky's dome house, ++
5. the Nautilus shell wall- a Nautilus shell made in Origami (not shown) by Shigeru in Japan, sent to Don as a gift, Don's watercolor painting of a Nautilus shell (his logo came from this- on his books, CD's and website), articles about the shell, problem from Don's worksheet book about the shell's growth, a Mathematica polar graph of the equation of the Nautilus and a rubbing of the shell compared (green middle-right below), a world map on a Nautilus, postcards of shells and spirals sent to Don, Don's poster- flowchart "A Map to Calculus", the San Diego Chicken, a handmade spiral (middle-top), a 3D wire graph of y=2x - 1 from The Tower Puzzle (left-bottom), photos of students from afar, a painting Tessa and Don did, paintings of Nautilus shells by Don's teacher -friend from Shreveport, LA left here when she visited. Why the Nautilus shell? Because it is beautiful and is a mathematical curve (spiral)!
Missing from the pictures above is Don's worktable with a lamp, computer, scanner, webcam (used with students from afar), printer, camera downloader, and telephone.