jake baker’s maths blog

I spent quite some time over the Easter holidays finding expressions for the volume of a dodecahedron and icosahedron (with edge lengths 1 unit).  I found that there is a known and perhaps surprising result, that a dodecahedron fills more of a sphere which it just touches (a circumscribing sphere) than an icosahedron.
 Here are the [...]

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GeoGebra is a very useful piece of free software for maths students. It allows you to draw geometric shapes on axes, and also to plot a huge range of functions. There are tools going well beyond the A level maths, but it’s easy enough for students at KS3 to use effectively. You [...]

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Fractions can be used to show amounts. Please add a comment, giving some examples. Please add links to any websites you have found useful for this topic. Thank you.

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Nets are 2D shapes which can be folded to make a 3D shape. How many nets are possible for a cube? Please add a comment with your answer, and include links to any websites which you found useful. Thank you.
When you’ve added your comment, you may play this game:
http://webspace.ship.edu/deensley/DiscreteMath/flash/ch1/sec1_1/drawthis.html

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Mobile phones: we all use them, but how do they work? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone . Is this article helpful, in your opinion? Have you found any other websites which give useful information about mobile phones? Please add a comment, copying in the website address if you have.

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Here are two great sites to visit. The Simon Singh site includes a section on code-breaking. http://www.simonsingh.net/
The Clay Mathematics Institute site offers seven prizes of $1million for seven problems … http://www.claymath.org/
You might also like to see this video, which has nothing to do with maths …

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