Twelve Year 8 and 9 students from Woodham Academy visited The Centre for Life, Newcastle to take part in a Festival of Maths event. ‘The Centre for Life has worked with the maths education department of Sunderland University to develop a selection of exciting hands-on maths activities that show that maths is so much more than a dull succession of paper exercises’.
The students investigated the orbits of satellites around the earth and had a go at reading the weather forecast in the Space Zone before learning about using the stars to navigate in the Planetarium. They had several logic puzzles to solve, using pirate treasure and coins, and launched rockets they had built in the Explorer Zone. The afternoon sessions focused on mobius strips, using bagels, and the mathematics of card tricks.
The students all did really well with some difficult maths problems and all enjoyed the day.
