Book Review : Math Trek - Adventures in the Math Zone

Title : Math Trek : Adventures in the Math Zone
Author : Ivars Peterson and Nancy Henderson Publisher : Jossey-Bass
There is an amusement park in town but this is quite unlike the ones that you must have been to so many times. Since this is an extraordinary amusement park, how can the ticket be a regular one for such a place. Of course, it is extraordinary too. Here your mind is the ticket as you unravel the secrets of many joy rides while having fun with math in everyday life.

The only way to open the naughty knotty gate is to find the knot that is not a knot. Tying a simple knot was never a problem and we all learnt it pretty early but tying a knot which is actually not a knot?, now that is the tricky part. Many magicians have earned our appreciation and applause performing exactly this trick seamlessly and now the visitors of this park can do it too. One hurdle crossed, time to enter MapZone and the lady manning the stall invites people to try the Map-ematical challenge. The visitors are handed six coloured pencils and they need to figure out the smallest number of colours that is needed to fill in the MathZone map so that a distinctive colour could be seen for each activity area. And the rule is : no two sections that share a border may by of the same colour.
Here is one for you to try. Can you complete the map using six colours? Five? Four? Three?


Once through the mapzone, proceed to fractal forest where an intriguing Mobius Strip roller coaster is waiting for you. Here you will be guided to design your own Mobius strip in order to feel confident that after the ride you all will end up right side up. So no need to fret. You come out of the roller coaster and enter the Mercenne's Fun House and The Fractal Pond Race. This is not it, in fact the joy ride continues with dice, decoding the code, a ride on Tilt-a-Whirl and in the wild game hall. Soon enough it is time to advance to the way-out zone where you are welcomed by intriguing fractal mazes to guess.
Remember how we all try to cover a regular amusement park by sampling different rides during the whole day that we spend there, similar is the case with Math Trek. The idea is to try as many activities as possible to derive maximum fun out of the Math Zone. Interesting trivia, sneak peek into historical background of the concepts, mind-exercising puzzles and the answers to the problems make this book a fun filled adventure read. 'Math Trek' is a wholesome package for children, parents and teachers. The driving force which led the couple to compile this book was to highlight the 'fun' component with math learning. 

Book Review : G is for Googol

Title: G is for Googol
Author: David M. Shwartz
Illustrations by Marissa Moss
Published by Random House

A for Abacus to Z for Zillion, 'G is for Googol' has all. The book introduces fascinating mathematical concepts in an interesting and palatable manner.

The Supreme teacher - nature seems to be an eternal lover of Math; It is surprising how Fibonacci numbers show up so much in nature! The number of petals in a flower is usually a Fibonacci number. Fibonacci numbers could also be called 'sunflower numbers', 'artichoke numbers' or 'pineapple numbers' because sunflower's seeds, artichoke's leaves and pineapple scales all spiral according to this series of numbers. Amazing, isn't it!!! Who can ignore amazing symmetry in nature.

Googol is actually a number which is 1 followed by 100 zeroes, and so is googolplex which is 1 followed by a googol zeroes. R is for Rhombicosidodecahedron and this is a real word and a mouthful too. It is a special kind of Polyhedron.

Little bees are not just busy, they are super intelligent too as they work to get the most space to store honey for the least amount of wax that they have to spend to build their honeycombs and so they use hexagons as the tessellate (when shapes cover a surface with no gaps in between, the shapes are tessellate) polygons to build their honeycombs. So you see, it does pay to be good at math - even if you are a bee!!

Talking about units, in Egypt about 5000 years ago, the distance from the pharaoh's elbow to the tip of his middle finger became the first standard unit of length. It was given the name Royal Cubit. Just imagine taking his elbow all over the place just so everyone could measure papyrus!! No prizes for guessing, what got invented - a measuring stick of course.

I have been asked this question by the little ones at home.. When are we ever gonna use this stuff anyway? The answer is - everywhere - at school, at home, at play, and at work. Don't you check the quantity and quality and the units used to measure what you’re buying. Living in this world who can avoid conducting transactions without dealing with money?

Designers of modern computers have weaved a whole new world around binary numbers because computers 'think' in binary. The computer understands only two digits - 0 and 1, and it is happy working with just these two digits to get amazing things done for us.

It is strange but the world of unknowns in Math which is also called algebra assigns names to unknowns and X can boast of being the most common and famous personality here whose identity changes with every equation and who revels in a new identity every single instance.

G is for Googol' would entice every reader to dig further and no matter how much you try, in no time this book would turn you into an ardent fan (if you already are not) of this wonderful subject which holds keys to solve many other queries that crop up in the minds. From light year to exponents explaining very big and very small numbers, from mobius strip to Fibonacci numbers, delightful information is tastefully packed which kids and even adults would love to explore. The fact that math is in every aspect of life would not go unappreciated when the concepts are found getting practically executed and validated in day to day life. A convincing presentation of the fact that math is all pervasive.Its time to kiss the Math phobia goodbye with this alphabet book.