Basic Computation

Abacus, The
A member of Ryerson Polytechnic Institute's Department of Engineering and Computing brings you this award-winning site about the history and operations of the abacus. The site compares devices from different countries, gives an overview of the abacus's history, teaches how to use an abacus, offers instructions on making an abacus out of Legos, and offers recommended reading and links.

Base Ten Activities
Professor Margo Lynn Mankus of George Mason University prepared this entertaining site designed to help students understand the base ten counting system. The site includes a user-friendly though detailed java applet which allows students to manipulate base ten counting units in an online game, with accompanying teacher materials.

FunBrain.com
This site provides a fun way for elementary students to reinforce basic math skills through interactive online activities about making correct change, fractions, and computation. For teachers, there's the opportunity to create customized online quizzes for your students. You and your students will also enjoy the language arts and geography games on this site.

Kids Only at Coolmath.com
A community college math instructor has created motivating games for this site. In the Math section, play the Number Monster! Pick an operation (add, subtract, multiply, or divide) and then choose a level (easy, medium, hard, harder, killer, monster). The easy section is good for younger students, but without using a calculator, some of the killer and monster problems will be a challenge for high school graduates! Check out more games in the section on Math Art & Games, and Geometry.

Moneyopolis
Have trouble saving money? Does it burn a hole in your pocket when you get your allowance? This site offers some suggestions for middle schoolers on saving and budgeting money. There is a money management spreadsheet for kids you can print off, a set of financial planning steps and other useful resources to help you plan your earning and spending habits. The teacher section has lesson plans based on NCTM standards. The Moneyopolis game requires a student login but also complies with COPPA online privacy requirements.

Multiplication.com
If you know someone having trouble with remembering the times tables, this site is loaded with interactive games, teaching strategies, activities, and printable flash cards. Strategies include using music, pictures, and rhyming among other ideas. The student section has one area for leaning the basics and some tricks to memorizing basic multiplication facts. The other area houses the games, which require Shockwave and Flash.

Visual Fractions
The purpose of visual fractions is to picture fractions on number lines and circles and to manipulate them using addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. There are also exercises for identifying and comparing fractions, mixed fractions, and reducing fractions. Each section includes games with Grampy and Grammy to practice the concepts presented. Your computer must be Java enabled to run this site

Computers in Math

KidsBank
A banking and money site aimed at elementary students introduces you to the characters Penny, Dollar Bill, Interest Ray, Checks the Dog, the Professor, Mr. Money, and Mr. EFT (Electronic Funds Transfer). Use the special calculators to figure how long it will take to save for holidays, save for a car, or become a millionaire by saving money. There are ten quizzes in the game room to play. Java and non-Java versions are available.

Manipula Math with Java
Interactive programs for middle and high school students to manipulate points, lines, and functions allow for animation that helps students grasp the meaning of mathematical ideas. Topics covered are Geometry 1 and 2, Trigonometry and Calculus. You must be able to download Java applets. The site is free although you can also purchase the license for the applets.

More Mathematics than Science
A high school math and physics teacher has created a site with descriptions and visualizations of functions, trigonometry, curves, and geometric topics. You will need VRML to view some of the animations. Spin the diagrams to get different vantage points. This site is great for visual learners who need to SEE how a formula works.

Pascal for Programming Illiterates
Four students in Singapore created this site as part of the international ThinkQuest competition. Visitors to the site will find a glossary, step-by-step instruction in Pascal, and e-mail links to the students if there are further questions.

Through the Glass Wall: Computer Games for Mathematical Empowerment
This site presents the results of three studies conducted by TERC and funded by the National Science Foundation. The studies examine the educational content of mathematically-oriented computer games and look for patterns in how boys and girls play each game. The site is easy to use and presents in-depth reviews of over 50 commercial software applications. Visitors can access information about different software programs by searching alphabetically, by age range, or by content strand. The site also includes a bibliography and list of links for those who want to learn more.

Geometry & Shapes

Be an Architect
Start with "I want to be an architect," which takes you to a page to deduce what kind of people live in different dwellings. Check your answers to advance through the section about choosing a site to build. Options are city, town, tropical forest, desert, and mountainside. Design your floor plan according to the number of people and types of rooms you want in your house. Clicking underlined words will pop up a window with definitions.

Dance of Chance: Fractals in Nature
This online exhibit is a collaboration between the Center for Polymer Studies and the Boston Museum of Science, based on current research by scientists around the world. The focus of the exhibit is the emergence of patterns in Nature from physical and biological processes. There are fractal images of fingering and branching patterns by termites, lightning, and erosion. There are also sound files of music set to heartbeats from an EKG. Explanations accompany each type of fractal. Audio and video clips require some plug-ins.

Geometry in Motion
Using Java Sketchpad, you can manipulate the geometric diagrams found at this site to interact and experiment with ellipses, triangles, circles, and other geometric shapes. The diagrams are followed by questions designed to help you understand the concepts presented and extend to related concepts. A great site for visual and kinesthetic learners! Adobe Acrobat and Java are required for viewing the site.

Geometry Math Problem of the Week
Swarthmore's Math Forum investigates a different math puzzler each week at this site. Past problems have dealt with pizzas, flags, baseball, kites, the Daytona Speedway, and dog houses. Answers and links to elementary-level problems are also available on the site.

Hyperspace Structures
From the Department of Mathematical Sciences at Loughborough (Britain) University. Explore four-dimensional structures, projected into three-dimensional space. A hypercube is a 4 dimensional analogue of the cube. Details of the construction of this object are given, along with movies of a spinning hypercube. By inserting new vertices into the edges and faces of a hypercube, it may be ``inflated'' to give an approximation to the hypersphere. Requires some downloading of mpeg movies.

KnotPlot Site, The
From a Ph.D. thesis by a computer scientist at the University of British Columbia, this site provides a collection of knots viewed from a mathematical perspective. The images were created to visualize and manipulate mathematical knots in three and four dimensions. In knot theory, two embedded circles (knots) are considered equivalent if one may be smoothly deformed into the other without any cuts or self-intersections. This notion of equivalence may be thought of as the heart of knot theory. Some images require downloading.

Manipula Math with Java
Interactive programs for middle and high school students to manipulate points, lines, and functions allow for animation that helps students grasp the meaning of mathematical ideas. Topics covered are Geometry 1 and 2, Trigonometry and Calculus. You must be able to download Java applets. The site is free although you can also purchase the license for the applets.

Native American Geometry
This site examines a proportional geometry originating in the circle. Practiced in Native America for at least two thousand years, this is the same type of geometry discovered and developed by peoples from China to the Mediterranean Basin to the British Isles. The site is divided into foundations, anthropology, designs, and education and provides lessons, activities, teacher resources, and tests.

Shape and Space in Geometry
The CPB/Annenberg Math and Science Project brings you geometry and spatial sense. Interactive web activities are included for both space and shape. One game has you use taxicab geometry to find a hidden treasure in a grid. Another activity is about patterns on quilts, and a third activity addresses estimating length.

Symmetry and Pattern: The Art of Oriental Carpets
Swarthmore University and The Textile Museum provide an excellent way to teach students about symmetry, tessellation, and other geometric concepts. The site includes a primer on different types of symmetry and pattern, a gallery of rug patterns, information on how oriental rugs are made, and student activities.

Symmetry and the Shape of Space
Developed by a university math professor, this site about symmetry is for high school students with a solid understanding of advanced math. Plane, cyclic, dihedral symmetry, mobius bands, tori, orbifolds, and paper dolls are highlighted. These paper dolls are not as simple as the kind you may have cut as a child! Proofs and theorems are provided for some patterns.

Totally Tessellated
Three high school seniors from Virginia, Georgia, and California designed this site for the 1998 ThinkQuest competition. The site includes beautiful graphics, an introduction to the concept of tessellation, use of tessellation in math, art, and science, a spotlight on Escher, and an exploration of the math behind tessellation.

Interdisciplinary Math

Bureau of Engraving and Printing , The
Did you know that the Bureau of Engraving and Printing produces 37 million notes a day with a face value of approximately $696 million? The BEP prints billions of Federal Reserve Notes (paper currency), most U.S. postage stamps, Treasury securities, identification cards, naturalization certificates, and other special security documents. This site has information about the new currency, anti-counterfeiting, money facts, and information for collectors. The Kid's Area, Money Central Station, is aimed at children ages 5 to 13 and introduces anti-counterfeiting features that are present in the new 1996 and 1999 Series Federal Reserve Notes. This section requires ShockWave and can be difficult to navigate.

Calendars Through the Ages
What founding father proposed Daylight Savings Time? Find out how humans have marked time through the weeks and years. Different calendars are represented including the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic religions as well as Chinese, Mayan, and other cultures. There is a timeline with interesting calendar facts about how and when different calendar systems have been adopted, vernal equinoxes, atomic time, and leap seconds. P.S. It was Benjamin Franklin in 1784.

Department of the Treasury for Kids
Follow TREZ, the Alley Cat, for a virtual tour of the United States Treasury Building. Learn about savings bonds, money, banking, starting your own business, taxes, and counterfeit money. You can find out what large denominations of paper money look like. Become a music store employee or a pizza delivery person and find out how your income is taxed. There is a Saving Bond Redemption Calculator to find out how much your bonds are worth since you bought them.

Discover Engineering Online
What do you think an engineer does? This is the definition the site provides: "Engineering is the application of math and science to create something of value from our natural resources." Learn about different fields like aerospace, materials, chemical, electrical, environmental, and mechanical engineering. There are puzzles, a scavenger hunt, and a Jeopardy-like game called TechnoBabble that you can play against an opponent. Be sure to check all the exhibits in Cool Stuff, where you learn about the engineering behind water slides, roller coasters, fighter jets, high performance gear, and test your own design skills.

EduStock
Students participating in the ThinkQuest competition designed this educational introduction to the stock market. Included are company profiles, a history of the stock market, a glossary of stock terminology, information about different types of stocks, and a stock market simulation. (The simulation requires that users provide an e-mail address.)

Egyptian Mathematics
Learn about the Egyptian decimal system and the seven symbols used to solve ancient math problems.

Engineering: Your Future
The American Society for Engineering Education has a site for high school students interested in engineering careers. The site introduces you to the different fields of engineering, profiles famous engineers, and offers guidance about courses to take while in high school as well as how to choose and pay for the right engineering college for you.

Eric's Origami Page
Learn math by folding paper! What angles and shapes can you make from folding a square of paper? Did you know that the fold called the "squash" is actually a bisection of an angle? You will also find diagrams to show you how to fold several shapes and the history of origami. There is more to this art of paper folding than just creating beautiful shapes. Advanced math students can also demonstrate complex mathematical ideas with origami.

Escape from Knab
The Escape from Knab simulation can be used in a variety of middle and high school classes in mathematics, social studies, family and consumer education. The goal is to teach financial strategies and decision making by having students earn money to pay for their transportation home from the fictitious planet, Knab. Activity sheets accompany the monthly lessons, which are based on various state and national math, economics, and life skills standards.

Figure This! Math Challenges for Families
NCTM, the U.S. Department of Education, and the National Science Foundation team up to provide this colorful, practical site built around math's everyday applications. Challenges cover questions related to health, transportation, food, and more. Each challenge includes fun statistics, related resources, and math resources for parents.

Journey in Time
The Franklin Institute brings you the history of telling time with calendars, seasons, and sundials. Younger students learn about telling time and changing time (seasons) by doing a variety of activities. Older students learn how the Foucault Pendulum and the gears of a clock work. Click on the images of children to find each topic, lots of games and content!

Math Careers
The Mathematical Association of America introduces you to some men and women who use mathematics every day and others who rely on the general problem-solving skills acquired in their mathematics courses. You'll meet software engineers, an environmental mathematician, and a marine research associate, who helps determine quotas on commercial fishing to avoid exploitation.

Math in Daily Life
The Annenberg/CPB Project's Learner Online offers this rich Web site introducing students to the multiple applications of math in everyday life. The site includes information and hands-on activities related to cooking, finance, population growth, home decorating, and language.

Mathematical Ideas in Science: Tutorial Modules
7 Stones Multimedia, a technology development company, has designed this Shockwave-enabled site to help students explore the connections between math and science. Modules include information on waves, orbits, half life, relativity, and more. You'll need high-end equipment (i.e., you really need the Shockwave to make full use of this site, and a speedy connection) and it's most appropriate for advanced students, but there's a lot here to explore.

National Math Trail
The National Math Trail encourages teachers and students to discover and share math concepts that exist in their own environments. Students explore and create math problems that relate to their communities. Teachers submit the problems to the National Math Trail site, which are then indexed according to grade level and math topic and remain on the site for access by educators, students, and parents. Students learn about their communities and see math in every day settings.

Numbers in the Real World
What do music, football, store discounts, heat index, grade point averages, bowling and pyramid schemes have to do with math? A textbook company has shared some everyday math at this site. You don't need the textbook to benefit from these activities.

Online Math Applications
This site by kids, for kids connects math with music, investing, science, history, and trips. Includes dozens of activity ideas and demonstrations.

Peanuts & Crackerjacks
The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston provides an educational unit on the economics of pro sports for high school economics and social studies classes. There is an interactive baseball game simulation that gives you a chance to test your knowledge of economics and sports trivia. The Sports Page has background information for each inning of the game, so you’ll want to warm up with the nine innings sections before you play. The teachers guide contains activities and discussion questions organized by inning. You must have Java to play the game and a pdf reader for some teacher files.

Pi in the Sky
This site is a semi-annual online math magazine for high school students focusing on mathematical reasoning and problem solving skills. You can learn about the history behind algebraic equations, see if you can get the humor in math in-jokes, try your hand at the math challenges, and meet people in math related careers. Archived issues can be accessed from the main site. Documents are in PDF format and download time can be lengthy. There is also the option to download the entire issue rather than article by article. Say, have you heard this one? A retired mathematician took up gardening and is now growing carrots with square roots.

Platonic Realms
The Platonic Realms site offers math humor, quotes, a Math Moment (detailed explanation of a concept), historical notes, and mathematical challenges every day. The PRIME Math Encyclopedia has almost a thousand entries, with two dozen extended articles on topics from Dandelin’s Spheres to Zeno’s Paradox of the Tortoise & Achilles. Don’t miss the mini-text on writing for math class, with ideas for implementing writing assignments in a math-class setting.

Powers of Ten
This is an amazing visual journey consisting of 42 images - 42 powers of ten. At one end of the journey is the immensity of the known universe, some 15 billion years old and 10 to 20 billion light years across. At the other end of the journey is a depiction of the three quarks within a proton. The image "One Meter Square" is in the middle of the continuum, and as you decrease to smaller powers of 10, you find pores in the skin, DNA, and a carbon nucleus. As you increase in powers of 10 from the central image, you move from Chicago to the Earth to the Solar System to clusters of galaxies. Note: This is a large, graphics-intensive site.

Profiles of Women in Mathematics - The Emmy Noether Lectures
The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) established the Emmy Noether Lectures to honor women who have made fundamental and sustained contributions to the mathematical sciences. These profiles are short biographies of over 20 women mathematicians, describing their major works as well as their outside interests. Interesting personal details are mentioned, from escaping Nazi Germany to women making their way in the world of mathematics when it was a man's domain. On a lighter side, one woman noted that "Maybe I became a mathematician because I was so crummy at housework."

Stuck in Traffic in Chicago
The Mathematical Association of America brings you a court case where you are called upon as a math expert to help provide an alibi for an accused bank robber. The situation calls for applying calculus to real-world data, calculating if the robber had time to drive to the bank and then home given the traffic reports and other data provided by the lawyer's investigation.

Titanic: What Can Numbers Tell Us About Her Fatal Voyage?, The
This Webquest, brought to you by the School of Education at Louisiana State University, engages students in Internet research and spreadsheet creation to connect math with the mysteries surrounding the Titanic. The site includes evaluation rubrics, lists of recommended resources, and clear step-by-step procedures written for secondary level math students.

U.S. Mint: H.I.P. Pocket Change, The
Although the kids' section of this Web site is geared primarily towards social studies students and coin collectors, the teachers area contains lesson plans, related resources, and an online forum to help teachers connect currency and math. The site is appropriate for grade school students and is colorfully designed.

Uncommon Knowledge: Hands on Math Projects
From the ERIC Clearinghouse on Rural Education and Small Schools, this document is a collection of 16 math activities for middle school students. The activities include quilting, tessellations, motions of shapes, symmetry, and studying math through crafts. There are handouts available for each activity. To access these files, you will need Acrobat Reader 4.05.

What Good Is Math?
This award-winning site was created by math education students at the University of Richmond. The first section, "Art & Math: How Are They Related?" is written more for teachers than for students, but other sections of the site related to sports, grades, vacations, etc. speak directly to students in upper elementary, middle and even high school.

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