Category Archives: Useful

It’s all relative

Washington Post: This high school student just won $250,000 for his film explaining Einstein’s theory of relativity.

“Ohio high school senior Ryan Chester became the inaugural winner of a new college scholarship on Sunday night, winning $250,000 for his 7-minute film that uses simple props and hand-drawn graphics to explain Einstein’s special theory of relativity.

Besides winning that money for himself, Chester also won $100,000 for a new science lab at his school in the Cleveland suburbs, North Royalton High, and $50,000 for his physics teacher, Richard Nestoff. […]

The scholarship is the newest award in the family of Breakthrough Prizes, which are meant to celebrate the importance of science and recognize brilliance in the fields of math, biology and physics. Founded three years ago by Silicon Valley giants […] the Breakthrough Prize offers awards ranging from $100,000 for promising early-career achievements to $3 million for scientists who have made fundamental discoveries about the world.”

IFL Science: Teenager Wins $400,000 For His Video Explaining Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.

Here’s the video on YouTube: Breakthrough Junior Challenge: Some Cool Ways of Looking at the Special Theory of Relativity, by Ryan Chester.

App für Mathelehrer

Pünktlich zum ersten Schultag bei mir in Rheinland-Pfalz: Jan-Martin Klinge weist auf eine App hin, die für Lehrer und Schüler sehr nützlich ist und für Android und iOS verfügbar ist:

die Formelsammlung des Duden-Verlags.

Es sind Formeln, Tabellen und Daten für die Fächer Mathematik, Physik, Astronomie, Chemie, Biologie und Informatik enthalten, außerdem ein Periodensystem der Elemente und zwei Deutschlandkarten mit den wichtigsten Daten zu den Bundesländern. Installieren!

Tool Unlocked: Equilateral Triangles

Euclid is a game of geometry played in your browser.”

Link via MetaFilter.

If you’re a math teacher, you don’t just waste time playing math games online, you test it thoroughly for using in a lesson. By that definition, I’ve been working for the past 30 minutes or so, completing all the levels (20 so far) of Euclid: The Game.

I think I’m going to have my students play this game in one of the final lessons before the summer holidays start, when motivation usually is at an all-time low. It’s in English, but the vocabulary shouldn’t be too hard to pick up.