News Headlines in the World of Math
Posted by: Elizabeth Redmond in High School Math, Middle School Math, Uncategorized
This morning, when I went online (my browser opens to MSN), and had scanned the homepage any faster, I would have missed two unique articles!
At first, the article “20 Thing You Didn’t Know About … Pencils” flashed before my eyes. So, naturally, being the math teacher that I am, I opened the link and read about 20 things I didn’t know about pencils. Dean Christopher (Discovery Magazine) lists some very interesting factoids about our beloved pencil.
Did you know …
- The average pencil has enough graphite to draw a line about 35 miles long
- The first American pencil factory opened in 1861 in New York City
- The word pencil derives from the Latin “penicilus,” meaning “little tail”
You can read the rest of Christopher’s pencil facts at “20 Things You Didn’t Know About … Pencils“.
And if pencils weren’t interesting enough, the next headline to catch my eyes was “ ‘Smoot’ reaches new heights in MIT.”
I can’t remember why I opened this link, but when I did, I read about the 50th anniversary of using a “Smoot” as a unit of measurement. In 1958, Oliver Smoot and his fraternity brothers at MIT measured the Harvard Bridge using Oliver as the unit of measurement! They found that the bridge was approximately 364.4 Smoots long (Oliver measured 5 feet and 7 inches). Smoot later became the chairman of the American National Standards Institute.
So, how could I not look for more information on the Smoot?
I didn’t really come across anything more than what I had already read. But, I did find a nice article from Cross & Crescent, a publication from Smoot’s fraternity. And I found on Google calculator that 35 feet = 6.26865672 Smoots.
Ferris Bueller said it best: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
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