math them

I've run packing activities before on gridded paper. While it was passable, there were usually a lot of questions about whether objects were successfully packed or peeking out over the line. Here we'll look at an arts and crafts project that serves as a preamble to exploring packing problems.

I volunteered at an event for SUMM the other week where students were putting together different three-dimensional shapes (polyhedra, cylinders, cones, etc) from paper nets . Seeing kids building cones reminded me of sphericons. I hadn't designed a sphericon net before and thought it might make for a fun, slightly-more-advanced build.

I was looking through some open problems in arithmetic combinatorics earlier this week and thought some of the problems that revolve around avoiding arithmetic sequences might make nice puzzles. We'll look at a few variants.

I got a couple construction toys and thought I'd look at some things that can be built with them, focusing on loops and polyhedral structures.

Today we'll look at an old puzzle that has gone by many names over the centuries, my favorite name being "The Great Tantalizer." The most popular recent iteration was Parker Brothers' "Instant Insanity," so that's what most people call it. We'll look at some variations that let students explore how this puzzle might be easy (or at least easier ), hard, or impossible.

Today we'll look at a puzzle set based on a classic problem about flipping pancakes.

Today we're going to look at some arts and crafts projects related to great (and not-so-great) circles found on polyhedra and links. A few of these models were shown to me by Mircea Draghicescu of ITSHPUN fame and the rest are riffing on the theme.

Polygon dissections have been a source of amusement and wonder in recreational mathematics for centuries. Today we'll look at a few related activity threads.