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Croydon
MathsFest Saturday 20th January 2001
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Croydon
teachers planned and ran a day of fun maths activities for the general public,
shopping in the Whitgift Centre.
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There was a small display of
children’s work, face painting, story telling and a variety of games and
puzzles all involving mathematics.
Children and adults could take part in “Play Your Cards Right”, giant
Noughts and Crosses, giant Connect 4, Hoop-la and games of Mancala. There were
maths investigations based on Braille, the Tower of Hanoi and the Bridges of
Konigsberg.
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Passers by were challenged to fold a sheet of paper in half 15 times to win a £1,000,000.
They were then asked to calculate why this is so difficult. A similar problem
was the Chessboard of Rice. If one grain of rice is placed on the 1st
square then double on the 2nd, etc, how much rice will be on the 64th
square?
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There were wooden puzzles to solve, jigsaws for all ages and origami. A variety
of equipment was available for people to make tessellating patterns in 2D and
3D.
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There were two large donations of chocolates and toffee from Thorntons for
people to guess the weight of in grams and the opportunity for them to weight
their shopping.
Many prizes were available for people who had persisted with a maths
activity. In addition people got the opportunity to buy Maths Year 2000 mugs and
T-shirts.
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The
day was a total success although the teachers involved in the planning and
running who had given up the whole of their Saturday were completely exhausted.
Many people asked us when we would be running another MathsFest.
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The
profile of mathematics as an enjoyable activity was raised 10-fold.
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