No Homework tonight

But please remember to talk to your family about Adopt-a-Family!!!!

Videos from class today:

Have a wonderful weekend!

-Miss K  :)

Fibonacci

Solar Panel Upgrade of the Day: A seventh-grader named Aidan Dwyer, inspired by the patterns of branches on oak trees, created a new arrangement of solar panels that generates 20-50% more energy than a the traditional flat solar array.

Aidan’s solar tree design is based on the Fibonacci sequence, a pattern that’s been observed in many places in nature, including tree branches.

For his trouble, Aidan received a Young Naturalist Award from the American Museum of Natural History, and a provisional patent on his invention.

(From the Daily What)

Aidan Says: "I designed and built my own test model, copying the Fibonacci pattern of an oak tree. I studied my results with the compass tool and figured out the branch angles. The pattern was about 137 degrees and the Fibonacci sequence was 2/5. Then I built a model using this pattern from PVC tubing. In place of leaves, I used PV solar panels hooked up in series that produced up to 1/2 volt, so the peak output of the model was 5 volts. The entire design copied the pattern of an oak tree as closely as possible. ... The Fibonacci tree design performed better than the flat-panel model. The tree design made 20% more electricity and collected 2 1/2 more hours of sunlight during the day. But the most interesting results were in December, when the Sun was at its lowest point in the sky. The tree design made 50% more electricity, and the collection time of sunlight was up to 50% longer!"

The Face

In class today we watched part of the BBC production, The Human Face, with John Cleese.  We decided to focus on the Beauty Mask created by Dr. Stephen Marquardt.  This mask was constructed through the use of mathematics and the "Golden Proportion" to determine ideal beauty.  We were able to go online and fit the mask to various beuatiful celebrities after watching the video and also view short online segments that talked about the math behind the concept of the golden proportion, phi, and the fibbonacci sequence.

My challenge for you today is to see if you can add to the fibbonacci sequence.  First I will explain how it works and start you off.  Then I hope that each additional comment added to this post will add the next number in the sequence.  (No being greedy, just put one down and then let someone do the next one...  If a mistake is made, feel free to addyour correction and then we can go from there.)

The fibbonacci sequence is a list of numbers in which the next number is determined by adding the two previous values.

1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, etc....

1 + 1 = 2
      1 + 2 = 3
            2 + 3 = 5
                  3 + 5 = 8
                        5 + 8 = 13
                               8 + 13 = 21
                                      13 + 21 = 34
                                              21 + 34 = ?

When you comment, please show the equation that you used to determine the next value.  Let's see how far we can get with these numbers.

Thanks for a great class today!  I was happy to see that you were into the movie and the math background.  We have the mini-assessment tomorrow.  Be sure to complete the practice paper so that you come in prepared and ready!  I will take questions at the beginning of class before we do our class assignment!

-Miss K