Math goggles: shapes within shapes
Math Goggles help you notice math everywhere. Help your kids to recognize simple shapes within shapes. Next, use these simple shapes to make more complex art. Use math words as you do so. Touch real objects so you can “see” shapes with your hands, too!
Make simple shape stamps out of potatoes or linoleum. Then make fun compound shapes out of shapes! Potato stamp book via Mathematics and Life on Pinterest. We have a chapter on fractals – special shapes out of shapes – in the Moebius Noodles book.
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Math Goggles: 3D printer adventures with Moebius strips
Math Goggles help you notice math everywhere.
The Moebius strip is the metaphor for everything endless or cyclic. Like what? Check out these composite symbols!
infinity + luck = ?
cycle + chase = ?
endless + love = ?
Moebius strip can mean endless bacon, to end world hunger!
Moebius strip can stand for Pi being irrational.
“Mobius Ganesha is named for Ganesha, the elephant-headed Hindu deity who is the remover of obstacles. It is also a single sided surface. Like a complex Mobius strip, the inside and outside are one. This represents non-dualism as well as the intellectual integration of radically opposing concepts into singular understanding.”
Meta-Moebius is made of 36 interlocking Moebius strips, to represent infinity infinities. Or maybe to represent 36 infinities.
Jokes about infinity and alcohol just write themselves when you look at the elegant Moebius Sake* Cup. In unrelated news, Moebius cups are chiral; here’s a left-handed version.
(*)Also works with vodka.
Pac-Moebius and the never-ending chase.
Ensure infinite luck with one-sided die. You are guaranteed to roll any number you want, as long as it’s 1.
The never-ending loop of Crash Tests? Joyfully macabre! We are told these happy test dummies are named Vince and Larry. Imagine the attack of the test dummy clones. Vince 1, Larry 1, Vince 2, Larry 2…
Moebius + a symbols of love = INFINITE LOVE. Here are two well-known symbols of love: matching rings, and a heart.
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Math goggles: Moebius jewelry and 19th-century animation machines
Math Goggles help you notice math everywhere. Thank you, Katrina Mills and STEMcrafted (J.E. Johnson) – you notice beautiful math on Pinterest!
If your kids don’t work with gold and silver as the sculptor Ilana Krepchin, you can still make Moebius strip jewelry out of fabric, polymer clay, or thick paper. Cover the strip with paint or polish to make it sturdy and pretty. Glue on a marble. It invokes the amazing property of the Moebius strip’s topology: your marble could roll around and around the single side!
Calculus is like animation: it captures infinitesimal instances of change and movement as snapshots! Invite your kids to animate like it’s 1830s. It takes just a few minutes to make a flipbook, a zoetrope, or a phenakistoscope. The hardest to pronounce is the easiest to make.
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Math goggles: cymatics and minimalist posters
Math Goggles help you notice math everywhere. Via Simon Gregg and Becka Rucker, who notice math on Pinterest.
Can you see sounds? Over a vibrating surface, sand or powder arranges itself into a symmetrical pattern, like a snowflake. You can use these cymatics effects to make fine art.
Try it at home with a DIY sound plate – or with a bit of sand on top of your subwoofer.
The genre of minimalist poster is accessible and popular, so you can easily make your own. Here are some beautiful examples from Emma Megan Moore.
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