Time zones and time changes

As you probably know we live in a divided world in terms of time.

What time is it? This appears to be an easy question
but in reality it is more complicated.

You will have to look at this information provided by BBC News,
and then you will answer these questions at home, using the comments:

• How many time zones are there in the world?
• How many time zones are there in Spain? How many in Europe?
• What are the circumstances of the girl in Indiana (USA)?
• What time is it now in Antartica?
• When and why do we change our time twice a year, moving  forward or backward our clocks by one hour?
• What is the International Date Line?
• How many time zones did Russia have before the country decided to reduce them to nine?
• In the International Space Station the astronauts can see a lot of sunsets and sunrises. How many of them every day?

Equations and Systems of equations

As I promised, here is the link where you can practise equations. It is very important to check the solutions. Click the image to start practising.

You have to make them for next tuesday march 15th.

If you can't make them all, try to do as many as you can.

Diophantus

Little is known about the life of Diophantus. He lived in Alexandria, Egypt, probably from between 200 and 214 to 284 or 298 AD. Much of our knowledge of the life of Diophantus is derived from a 5th century Greek anthology of number games and strategy puzzles. One of the problems (sometimes called his epitaph) states:

'Here lies Diophantus,' the wonder behold.

Through art algebraic, the stone tells how old:

'God gave him his boyhood one-sixth of his life, (x/6)

One twelfth more as youth while whiskers grew rife; (x/12)

And then yet one-seventh ere marriage begun; (x/7)

In five years there came a bouncing new son. (5)

Alas, the dear child of master and sage

After attaining half the measure of his father's life (x/2) chill fate took him. After consoling his fate by the science of numbers for four years, he ended his life.' (4)

The red expresions shows the translations from words to algebraic language. Being x the years that Diophantus lived, you need to add up all the expresions above to find out the answer.

TASK: You have to write the equation and the age of Diophantus when he passed here, but you need to give me a sheet of paper with the calculations made.

(from: wikipedia)

END DATE: Next Friday, March 2nd.

The internet and the powers

Imagine that you upload a picture on "tuenti". It's a funny one, about you and your best friend in a party. The next day, at school, you see that a lot of people are staring at you. Two days later you feel that a lot of poeple are doing the same on the streets, and you don't know why.

One of your friends on "tuenti" took the picture and sent it to five friends. You don't know who, you probably added him/her without even knowing his/her name.

They don't understand the actual meaning of the picture (two friends just having a good time), and they think that you were drunk. The next day each of the five friends send the picture to another five, and they do the same thing the following day and so on.

Watch this video before answering two questions.

• What happens when you upload something on the internet?
• How many new people will see your picture the day number... (answer with your list number)?

TIME LIMIT: December 1, 2010.

The Waiter

Three men in a cafe order a meal the total cost of which is $15. They each contribute $5. The waiter takes the money to the chef who recognizes the three as friends and asks the waiter to return $5 to the men.

The waiter is not only poor at mathematics but dishonest and instead of going to the trouble of splitting the $5 between the three he simply gives them $1 each and pockets the remaining $2 for himself.

Now, each of the men effectively paid $4, the total paid is therefore $12. Add the $2 in the waiters pocket and this comes to $14.....

Where has the other $1 gone from the original $15?

I'm back again!

Hello students!! Here I am again. I was thinking about your first test, that will

come very soon, when I found this picture. What do you think about it?

I'd like you to work with combined operations: 

Click and print the exersice below, and then solve it. If you have any questions you can e-mail me.

Exercise

End date: Wednesday, october the 6^th

A hungry worm

There is a really nice math encycolpedia in the library with only 4 volumes and 400 pages each. A hungry worm makes a tiny tunnel from the first page of the first volume to the last page of the last volume. The librarian says to the math teacher:

• A worm has pierced 1.600 pages!
• Oh! No friend! Not that many! -answers the teacher calculating the result-
• Really? so how many pages has the worm pierced?

Can you help the librarian to get the answer?

Translated and adapted from the book "El País de las mates 1" by Miquel Capó

EDITADO: Here is an image that can help you to solve this question:

Berter The Converter

Brittany has created a new character named Berter The Converter, and I think he is quite a good guy. His first appearance was some weeks ago, when we were talking about decimal numbers and he tried to help us to multiply them, by converting (yeah! he is The Converter) from imperial to metric units. He also showed us that imperial units are not in a decimal system, so you have to use different conversion factors between multiples of the same unit.

Last week Berter striked back with percentages: Berter Goes Shopping. He went shopping on sales, so he had to calculate the final price by substracting the different discounts of the items in different shops. I'm not sure wether Berter learnt something about how to calculate some percent of a quantity, but i think he really had a good time. His last appearance was yesterday during the test.

What do you think about Berter The Converter?
Do you like him?
How do you think he looks like?

Math Trick's Day (instead of Patrick's)

Can you see the mug for the beer? As you know the english world uses different units to measure things (Do you remember gallons?). A very common one is the PINT, for example a pint of beer or a pint of milk. Can you tell me the conversion for pints into liters? I'm looking forward to reading your answers.

Click on the image to get a better resolution.
From Spiked Math

Test answers

ha ha ha ha, the answers... how gullible

Click on the image to get a better resolution.
From Spiked Math

No Calculators

You know that you are not alowed to use your calculator, don't you?

From Spiked Math

Absolute value

Now you know about absolute value, you may understand this one:

From Spiked Math

Divisibility Bingo!

Last thursday we played our second Math Bingo! of the year.

It was about divisibility, and everybody played very well. GOOD JOB!!!

Antonio Peña won a positive point for his BINGO. María Romero and Lidia Pérez got another one in the first bingo.

CONGRATULATIONS!!!

Happy Mathgiving

Gracias al seguimiento que hago de algunos blogs en la red, y en concreto a un post que ha compartido mi cuñado en Google Reader, he leido esta tira cómica acerca de las matemáticas y el Thanksgiving day. Me ha parecido graciosa (aunque no espero que lo entendáis). Pulsando la imagen os lleva al artículo original.

Proviene de Spiked Math, Daily Math Webcomic, donde publican viñetas cómicas regularmente relacionadas con las matemáticas. Espero vuestros comentarios.

Hypatia of Alexandria and her friends.

Hypatia of Alexandria (370 – 415) was a Greek philosopher who lived in Alexandria (Egypt, Roman Empire). She was the best in mathematics and astronomy in her time.
Hypatia wrote about Euclid (300 BC), who also had lived in Alexandria seven centuries before. He was a Greek mathematician know as the "Father of Geometry." He wrote a book called “Elements” which has been the most influential work in the history of mathematics. It is about geometry, perspective, conic sections, spherical geometry, number theory, etc.
She knew Aristarchus of Samos (310-230 BC) theories about the heliocentric model of the solar system, with the Sun in the center of the universe.
Hypatia also wrote about Eratosthenes of Cyrene (195 BC), who was a very good friend of Arquimedes. Eratosthenes was a Greek mathematician, geographer and astronomer. He was the first who exposed a system of latitude and longitude to represent the Earth. He also calculated the circumference of the Earth with great accuracy. Do you want to know how?
But this tradition had begun with Pythagoras of Samos (570- 495 BC), a Greek philosopher known as "the father of numbers” He was a great mathematician and scientist. Do you know what the Pythagorean teorema is?

Hypatia test

In this post you will see a presentation about Hypatia, and then you will have to answer a test.

Let see what you have learnt about Hypatia

Who was Hypatia?

Hipatia de Alejandría (370 – 415).

La película de Amenábar ha sacado de la oscuridad a la figura de Hipatia, una intelectual muy importante de finales del s. IV y principios del V, que desarrolló su labor en Alejandría (Egipto) en la fase final del imperio Romano.

También se han publicado últimamente algunas novelas que tratan la vida de esta filósofa de la antigüedad desde perspectivas más rigurosamente históricas o menos, dependiendo de los casos (El sueño de Hipatia, Tormenta sobre Alejandría, etc.).

Hipatia fue profesora, experta en filosofía griega, científica excelente que sobresalió en matemáticas y astronomía. Conocía perfectamente la filosofía antigua y estaba especializada en estudios lógicos y ciencias exactas.

Now you know something about Hypatia of Alexandria (370 – 415), she was a very good Greek philosopher who lived in Alexandria (Egypt, Roman Empire). She was great in mathematics and astronomy. If you want to know something else about this excellent woman, watch the following video:

La feria

Es una pena que la feria dure tan poco tiempo pero es una semana muy guay.
Lo qe mas relacionamos nosotros la feria con las mates son:

• el techo de los coches de tope, que es rectangular y tiene formas triangulares
• la barca: es triangular y simétrica.

De: Antonio C, Pilar & Mari Carmen.

Feria Matemática

Todos los profesores de matemáticas os dirán que su asignatura está por todas partes, y que tiene mucha aplicación en la vida real. Yo creo que tienen razón, pero a veces tenemos que fijarmos un poco para darnos cuenta. Os propongo el siguiente tema:

Let's try to find some relationship between Maths and Montoro Festival. I can imagine some examples like geometric figures, prices,... If you want, you can also add some images.

Of course, everybody can comment the posts.