Kaleidocycles are a three-dimensional paper sculpture you can turn around and round! Flexagons were first created by Arthur Stone at Princeton University in 1939, which were later published in 1959 to the general public in Scientific American. These are simple to make…
This isn’t something you’d normally find in a math class, but I find it incredibly useful to know how to turn a simple sheet of paper into the envelope you can mail it in. The letter you write goes on…
There’s more than one way to fold a cube. So print out the attachment, grab some tape and sticky notes and we’ll have some fun with geometry! How many different shapes can you use to make a cube? NOTE: You’ll…
Although the Möbius strip is named for German mathematician August Möbius, it was co-discovered independently by Johann Benedict Listing, a completely different German mathematician, but at around the same time in 1858. Weird, right? But that’s not the only strange…
Did you know that you can step through a sheet of paper using just a pair of scissors to help? Does this sound impossible? Well, this is where math and magic come together! Watch the video and I’ll explain. NOTE:…
Remembering and visualizing most shapes is pretty easy, right? An octagon can be a challenge for some (it has eight sides, while the commonly-confused hexagon has six sides). In this experiment, we try to recall and draw some everyday objects…
Fractals are new on the mathematics scene, however they are in your life everyday. Cell phones use fractal antennas, doctors study fractal-based blood flow diagrams to search for cancerous cells, biologists use fractal theory to determine how much carbon dioxide…
A pantograph, first invented in the early 1600s, was used to make exact copies before there were any Xerox machines around. It’s a simple mechanical device made up of four bars linked together in a parallelogram shape. Here’s how it…
The trick looks impressive, so be prepared for jaw-drops when you show this to kids and adults. But can you figure out how it works? I’ll give you a hint: think about how to represent placeholders of powers of 10……