[This is a back-issue of one of this site’s newsletters]
If you fancy yourself an amateur mathemagician, here’s a new trick to add to your repertoire. A card is selected from a special pack – eavh card has a letter and a number. Spell out the number drawn, sort the cards into two piles, do a little arithmetic, and presto! The original number appears!
You can read about how the trick works at this web page, and also get yourself a pack of the special cards. Don’t forget to watch the video too!
This is just one of a whole bunch of “mathemagic tricks” on Dr Mike’s Math Games for Kids – magic tricks that work because of math. To find more, visit the site, look for the search box, and search for “magic”. Also, stay tuned, I have another card trick one up my sleeve, that I’ll soon cause to magically appear on the site!
On another topic, you know that Easter is coming up soon. Did you ever wonder how the date is worked out? Believe it or not, there’s a mathematical formula that gives the date of Easter in any year. A few years ago I condensed that formula into a worksheet that kids can use to compute the date of Easter. Check it out, it’s a great exercise for practicing order of operations and division with remainders. There’s also a video demonstrating how to use the worksheet.
You should also drop by the Math Games for Kids blog – there’s some light-hearted posts on what a Polar Bear is or on what happens when English Proverbs are treated perfectly logically, plus a more serious post on experiments in education.
Yours,
Michael Hartley
(Dr Mike’s Math Games for Kids)