Puzzle Sessions

Designed by Anusha & Hilary

Puzzle Session 1

Logic puzzles, Sudoku puzzles, Rubiks Cubes, Tavern Games, and misc. other puzzles

A pattern puzzle from Lisa M.: Given the first 5 numbers in a sequence:

1, 11, 21, 1211, 111221, ...

What is the 6th number in the sequence?

Puzzle Session 2

Paper folding puzzles: Students figured out how to fold patterns, given the completed designs, and students constructed their own folding projects.

Puzzle Session 3

Carol and Edie were our guests, and we looked at tessellations. Carol brought several examples of tessellations, including works of Islamic art, works of her students, and fabric prints. We looked at what tessellations are and found them in our surroundings. Then students worked in pairs to create tessellations in sidewalk chalk on the walk between Clapp and the library. Thanks Carol and Edie!

Puzzle Session 4

Guided by Week 1 guest faculty Maura Murray, we discussed the infamous remarks of Harvard's former President Lawrence Summers concerning women in science and mathematics. We then watched the episode from Simpsons called "Girls just want to have sums." Then Maura showed the website Simpsonsmath.com and we went through different episodes and the math in the episodes, and also talked about the mathematicians who write for the show, and discussed ideas we thought the writers were trying to convey.

Puzzle Session 5

We watched a short film on the shape of space which introduced the idea of Torus space. Using concepts we learned from the film, we played some online Torus games. The games can be found at the website http://www.geometrygames.org.

Maura introduced who Lawrence Summers is and what he is infamous for.





We had a brief discussion about the episode.