Maths Inspiration Day

On Tuesday 27th March, Mr Long and Mr Battersby took eleven Year 10 pupils to a series of "Maths Inspiration" lectures, given at the Hippodrome in Bristol. The lectures were aimed at Years 11 and 12, but our Year 10s coped with them admirably.

The three speakers spoke about designing software games, designing and building a roller coaster and the chances of winning a TV Game Show. The maths involved covered simultaneous equations, vectors, polygons, matrices, probability, decision theory and a lot more besides.

The pupils enjoyed the lectures, which were followed by a packed lunch in the sun, on the docks in Bristol.

The students were a credit to the school.

Rob Long

Pi-Day 14 March 2012

Mangotsfield Maths Department again lead the school in celebrating Pi Day.

Pupils engaged in various activities such as making the Pi symbol on the playround, making a circle and diameter on the playground and seeing who could remember the most digits of Pi.

The school restaurant entered into the spirit by offering chicken and mushroom pi, Key Lime pi and circular quiches.

The lunchtime final of "Remembering the digits of Pi" was contested by 8 pupils. Will Linton rembered 66 digits to be 3rd, Will Graham remebered a worthy 80 digts, but the winner, remembering an amazing 200 digits of Pi, was Tom Smith of 8.4. He takes away the prize of £31.42.

Well done Tom.

Rob Long

Year 7 Maths Stars - Dec 2011

Year 7 classes made Christmas stars using plenty of maths this week. First paper was folded and cut to make a square, then folded in half, then quarters, then cut with parallel lines.

Rotational Symmetry

They then followed a sequence of taping and turning the paper to make one segment. They then made six identical pieces, stapled them together to make a star with rotational symmetry of order six.

Monday - Pi-Day

Pi Day – 14th March 2011

Π = 3.141589...........

Pi Day is celebrated on March 14th. In American Date format the day and month are 3/14 which happens to be the first 3 digits of Pi. It is also the birthday of Albert Einstein.

In 2009 The US House of Representatives designated the 14th of March as Pi Day and “It urges schools to take the opportunity to teach their students about Pi and engage them about the study of mathematics”.

Having learned about Pi Day whilst talking to a US teacher, in Florida, Mr Long thought it would be a nice idea to introduce it to Mangotsfield School!

The Maths teachers kicked the day off by wearing T-shirts with various interpretations of Pi, Πrate and “Who ate all the Pis?” being 2 of them. 

Numerous classes were involved in Pi and circle based activities, some Year 11’s formed the Pi symbol on the playground, circles were drawn on the playground, Mrs Smiths Year 9 and 10 classes planted a circle of flowers with a Pi symbol in the middle, this will look really good when the flowers have had a chance to establish themselves. Many classes also did work on measuring circumferences and diameters of various circular objects, to see how close they could get to Pi.

Pi Day lunchtime was the time for the Pi Day Digits Challenge, where pupils were encouraged to remember the most digits of Pi. We had had 16 participants from years 7, 8, 9 and 10. The winner was Ellie who managed to recite Pi to 150 decimal places, an awesome achievement, for which the prize was £31.42 ......

Next year we will do the same activities as this year and hopefully add a few Pi(e) activities by getting the restaurant to join in.

Many thanks to all the pupils and teachers that got involved.

Rob Long.