Written on April 14, 2008

April 22nd is Earth Day!

There are many opportunities to integrate math into your outdoor activities during your Earth Day Celebrations.
In addition to doing your regular math outdoors and working on outdoor math problems, you can also find mathematical patterns hidden in nature.

Look for patterns in nature such as Fibonacci numbers, the Golden Ratio, symmetry and fractals in leaves, snowflakes, shells, pinecones, flowers and insects.

• Listen to our Golden Mean and Fibonacci dialogue from our Crazy 4 Math album — this explains the relationship between Fibonacci and the irrational number Phi.

Nature also provides ample opportunity to compare and contrast the very small and the very large.
Check out our What's a Googol? section to see our video and find out about large numbers.

Listen to our Golden Mean and Fibonacci dialogue from our Crazy 4 Math album — this explains the relationship between Fibonacci and the irrational number Phi.

The Earth Day Activity: Drinkable Water, submitted by our local Eco-Club combines math and the natural element water. This demonstration of a proportionate amount of drinkable water provides a shocking representation of how precious drinking water is. Mathematical concepts include measurement, conversions, capacity, ratios and arithmetic. You can also bridge in human geography and discuss the share of water per person.

Earth Day Math Section

Visit our new Earth Day Math section for more ideas.