Middle and High School … from a Montessori Point of View
I was talking to Mr. E., one of the upper school history/geography teachers about the historical significance of tea. Then I ran into this: Alan Rickman makes a cup of tea (by David Michalek). Observe the awesome teacup.
Portraits in Dramatic Time (Alan Rickman) from Moving Portrait on Vimeo.
Khan Academy videos on how to solve systems of linear equations:
Use a graphing calculator to double check your lines, or use WolframAlpha, or use my simple line grapher.
Video: Solving Linear Systems by Graphing
Most algebra texts have good problem sets for practice (Khan Academy does not – as yet).
Moving from the more intuitive, visual, graphical method of solution to the more exact algebraic methods, we start with solving by substitution.
Video: Solving Linear Systems by Substitution
Practice Set: Practicing Systems of equations with substitution
Video: Solving Systems of Equations by Elimination
Additional Video: Solving systems by elimination 2 (on YouTube).
Additional Video: Solving systems by elimination 3 (on YouTube).
Practice Set: Practicing Systems of equations with simple elimination
2 billion years from now, the Milky Way will collide with the Andromeda Galaxy. This video from NASA shows a simulation (it also talks about star formation and the creation of the elements during intergalactic collisions).
A billion, in continental Europe is, a million squared ( 1,000,0002 = 1,000,000,000,000), but in the English speaking world, a billion is only a thousand million (1,000,000,000). numberphile goes into the beautiful, mathematical logic of the longer form (i.e. the continental system).
Of course, the “simplest” system, which avoids all the potential for miscommunication, is the standard scientific notation, where 1,000,000,000 is written as 1×109 (or just 109).
The whole episode is worth watching, but this little section (at 10:52) of MythBusters’ attempt to build an earthquake machine there demonstrate the resonance frequency in a water tank provides a nice visualization.
NASA gets dramatic. But the drama is oh so appropriate when you see what they have to do to land a rover on Mars. There are so many steps to the landing — heat shields, atmospheric friction, parachute, rockets — that it’ll be amazing if it works, and the video is a wonderful “strike the imagination” introduction to the physics of forces.