Math Camp Wrap up!

Hi all!  I will try to get pictures into a folder soon. Otherwise I'll email each person a few of their kids' photos, especially the bridges.

On Friday we had "Engineering" day.  After solving a few puzzles about bridges and crossing rivers, we built bridges using 1 lb spaghetti, 10 glue sticks, and a roadbed.  Some bridges were beautiful and mathematical, some were along the lines of, "Put all the spaghetti on the roadbed and use all the glue."  Unfortunately, the less elegant ones were stronger, but I hope everyone enjoyed the process. 

Here is a video describing the forces a bridge faces, and demonstrating bridge destruction:
https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-content/mit-k12/mit-k12-physics/v/bridge-design-and-destruction-part-1

We also built a geodesic dome.   Here is a link to the design we used: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/buildingbig/educator/act_geodesic_ho.html
The site has lots of examples of geodesic domes.

The previous day was probability.  We talked about Pascal's triangle and its link to combinatorics.
Here is a website with lots of activities:
http://www.korpisworld.com/Mathematics/diversions/exploring_pascal.htm 

We also talked about experimental vs. theoretical probability using Skittles, which was very popular.

Thanks for sending your kids!  I enjoyed having them, even though it was chaotic at times.  I hope to have the opportunity to do math with them again!