Suzanne at the Math Forum

Last week a fourth grade teacher in Philly invited me to work with her students. She emailed me to explain, ”We are moving into intersecting, parallel, and perpendicular lines. Would it be possible to focus your lessons Tuesday and Wednesday around this skill?”

On Monday I was still thinking about possibilities. I was walking in South Philly and suddenly thought of taking some photos with my iPhone. Here are the photos I took that day:

I combined them from photos that I took in New York City some time ago and posted here:

http://mathforum.org/blogs/suzanne/2012/07/

I made a PDF with one photo per page, sent it to the teacher Monday late afternoon so that she could project it on Tuesday during class. Here’s how the lesson went:

After greeting the students who I’ve not seen for awhile (standardized testing prep consumed their school/teacher for quite some time), I wrote these phrases on the board:

parallel lines
perpendicular lines
intersecting lines

I asked them to talk to me — I asked them,  ”What do these phrases mean to you?” It quickly became quite clear that they knew a lot! After some time listening to them I told them that I took some photos on Monday. I further explained that I had been thinking about today’s visit and had “parallel” “perpendicular” and “intersecting” on my mind. We looked at the photos together (projected on the SMARTboard by their teacher). The photo that we really started talking about was this one:

What do you see?

In case you’d like a copy of the PDF I created and sent to the teacher, I put it here so that it’s accessible:

http://mathforum.org/alejandre/linesbig.pdf

When I saw this (photo above) I suddenly saw symmetry. I’m taking @joshuazucker’s advice and not saying much more than that. Once I took the first photo this morning I continued walking to work and took these photos with that same theme in mind. What do you notice?

click on each photo to view a larger one

click on each photo to view a larger one

click on each photo to view a larger one

Yesterday when we left the house I had planned to look for “math” on our trip to New York City. I have a tendency to spot symmetrical objects/scenes and tessellations as I view the world and I just thought that Thursday would not be any different than other days. The first leg of our journey was on SEPTA from Morton to 30th Street in Philadelphia. I noticed the floor runner between the aisles of seats. I didn’t take a photo of it but when I got off the train, I took this photo:

It took me some time to fully realize what the dominant mathematical theme for the day would be. Once I got over the fact that tessellations were not going to dominate, I took these photos:

I should have had a clue when I chose what to wear in the morning!

Last week I used a memory from over 25 years ago and this week my thoughts turned to a memory that is probably only 15 years or so old. For some reason I’m attracted to patterns — I look for them constantly. In fact, in part it was my fascination with tessellations that led me to my Math Forum job! Unlike Lee’s question about the world turning color, I can’t exactly pinpoint when our older son Niko commented to me about my “eye” to patterns but I remember the conversation. I was noticing out loud something that focused my attention and Niko said, “Mom, you just think that way, don’t you?” And I said, “Yes. I’m not sure why but as I encounter the world my eye focuses on shapes and designs and color. I’m always looking for a pattern.”

It seems normal for me and I can’t imagine that others don’t see what I see. This morning as I was thinking about this I thought that I’d look through my iPhoto library to find a couple of photos I might have taken. I started laughing because I have quite a collection. Below are a few that I chose to share.

What do you see?