Mathematics also helps us develop technologies to accomplish amazing feats, like traveling into space or communicating by computer.
One of our volunteers has developed a new lesson plan that helps 5th and 6th grade students work with rations, proportions and comparisons. The lesson shows students how to take lifesize measurments and convert them to models. As an example, if you were to take our 16" inflatable EarthSeeds globe and try to visualize the atmosphere above it, the troposphere, which is 10 miles thick, would appear to be .02 inches high (or 20 mils or 500 microns).
The top of Mount Everest, where the air is already too thin for regular breathing, would be .011 inches (roughly half the thickness of the troposphere). Regular copy paper is about .004 inches thick. About how many sheets of copy paper would it take to simulate the height of Mount Everest? How many sheets of paper would show the thickness of the troposphere?
We will be adding more mathematics materials and links here soon that will help you further explore how mathematics is used to study and understand the Earth.
Links
Math in Daily Life from Annenberg/CPB shows examples of how math is used in daily life from cooking to understanding population growth...plus a links page for more.
Thank you to our mathematics sponsor, TouchMath, the leading multi-sensory teaching approach that bridges manipulation and memorization. Educators often think of it as mental manipulatives.
EarthSeeds seeks to provide a wide variety of viewpoints and information. We do not necessarily endorse all opinions, resources or other information contained on this website or linked websites. Copyright EarthSeeds 2005.