Book Club Week 9 {Math and Magic in Wonderland}

Can you believe we're already on Chapter 9 of the book club for the math adventure novel Math and Magic in Wonderland?  Join us this week as we catch thieves, double pennies, and eat mock turtle soup.. yum!

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Remember to share the fun your family is having with the book club.  Leave a comment at the end of this blog post and share on social media.

To Catch a Thief

In Chapter 9, Lulu identifies the deceiving and thieving Slithy Tove using a trick inspired by the story of John Napier's rooster.  You can read the entire story here.

Your Turn to Play:

• Read more about the antics of John Napier and other famous mathematicians.  I can't recommend these fantastic books enough!
  
  

     

  
  
• You can spend the week exploring forensic investigation ideas on the Science Spot website.

• Purchase a Master Detective Toolkit.

           

Doubling Pennies

Lulu chose to receive payment from Mrs. Kangaroo by getting a single penny on the first day, two pennies on the second day, four pennies on the third day, and so on (with the number of pennies doubling each day).  Mrs. Kangaroo was unaware of the power of power functions.  We had fun this week counting cereal and seeing how quickly exponents can grow:

Your Turn to Play:

• Read One Grain of Rice by Demi - a gorgeous book about a girl who outsmarts the king in the same manner as Lulu.

• Another beautiful book about large numbers and mathematical patterns is Anno's Mysterious Multiplying Jar

• See how quickly a doubled penny can really grow with these charts of the cumulative totals.

Towers of Hanoi

In Chapter 9, the girls solved the Towers of Hanoi problem with soup bowls.  Lulu demonstrates the solution here:

Your Turn to Play:

• Play Towers of Hanoi Online (free)

• Get your own Wooden Towers of Hanoi Logic Puzzle

Full Book Club Schedule

Here is the Book Club / Math Circle schedule (you can join any time):

 Week of August 1st:

• Book Club Kick-Off Party!
• Read Chapter 1: Mrs. Magpie's Manual
• Alliteration
• Memorizing digits of Pi
• Palindromes
• Calculating your age on other planets

Week of August 8th:

• Read Chapter 2: Magic Square
• Making tangrams
• Acute, obtuse, and right angles
• Magic squares
• Adding consecutive numbers using Gauss's trick

Week of August 15th:

• Read Chapter 3: Secret Codes
• Word permutations
• Cartesian coordinates
• Operations on odd and even numbers 

Week of August 22nd:

• Read Chapter 4: Rabbit Trails
• Drawing a perfect circle
• Making a compass
• Finding the center of a circle
• Exploring Pi
• Famous mathematicians who followed rabbit trails

Week of August 29th:

• Read Chapter 5: Two Worlds Join
• Mobius strips
• Fractals
• Tessellations

Week of September 5th:

• Read Chapter 6: River Crossing
• River Crossing Problems
• Build a boat and explore buoyancy

Week of September 12th:

• Read Chapter 7: Seven Bridges
• Seven Bridges of Königsberg problem
• The power of exponents
• Word ladders
• Thales's method for calculating the height of an object

Week of September 19th:

• Read Chapter 8: Veracity
• Truth-tellers and liars
• Finding a fake coin using a balance scale
• Archimedes buoyancy principle

Week of September 26th:

• Read Chapter 9: To Catch a Thief
• John Napier's Rooster
• Doubling pennies and calculating exponents
• Towers of Hannoi

Week of October 3rd:

• Read Chapter 10: The Vorpal Sword
• Square numbers
• Prime numbers
• Fibonacci Sequence
• Relativity and time dilation
• Acrostic poems

Week of October 10th:

• Read Chapter 11: Two Great Powers
• Book Club Finishing Party with Prizes!

Thanks for joining us.  I can't wait to read your comments!