Articles by mathgrrl

Today we meet in Roop Hall, room 103, for our final project showcase. Be there at 9:30 or earlier to set up, and make sure you have all your prints and materials with you. If you happen to want cake for breakfast, we’ll have that […]

Today you’ll all do a practice run of your presentations. Get set up and ready for me to come by and see a practice run. FYI, here’s the email I sent to the math department faculty/staff/students: On this Thursday morning from 9:45-10:45am, my MATH 103 […]

Today’s quiz: Do you have your First Fractal, Tinkercad Fractal, and Carpet Fractal prints? Record it on the sheet that will be passed around, then give your prints to the corresponding groups (you’ll get them back next week). Keep working on presentations: Dragon Curve, Fractal […]

Welcome back! Today we’ll handle various administrative/grading issues, and start planning for final presentations next week. First: Grades and Revisions Hand out individual grade estimates In Open Project groups: Hand back grades, discuss revisions Stand up and meet in Tinkercad Fractal groups: Hand back grades, […]

First: Print stuff Anything need reprinting? If you can’t get the raft off, accidentally printed with a brim that is now stuck all around your fractal, or if a print doesn’t look great for some other reason, then print it again. Use the Ultimakers. If […]

First: Print stuff You should have all three levels of your personal carpet fractal printed. We’ll start with a quiz-check to reward those of you that have done so. If not, or if you have prints from the Afinia whose rafts did not separate well, […]

First: Print some grids Create, export, slice, and print grids for Level 2 and Level 3 using the file gridlines.scad in the 3SPACE SHARE folder Second: Quizzes Print check:  Each person should have at least one print of their Fractal Carpet at the start of […]

// Roundup // By this point you should be completely done with your Open Project and everything about its documentation and blog post. We’re now moving on to an invididual project where each student must make their own design. Ech of you should have already […]

Today you’ll be finishing your Open Project presentations. If you have anything you need to fix in your blog post, today is the day to get that done. After the presentations, we’ll talk a little bit about OpenSCAD to get ready for a short project […]

Class will start with a brief quiz on the infinite geometric series calculations you did for homework. Then, on to more excellent presentations! Homework for next time: Thingiverse and Tinkercad (or other design software) links to your projects. See the Assignments page.

Today you get to share your projects with the rest of the class, and find out what everyone else has been up to!             // For Next Time // Your homework is to prepare for a short quiz on geometric […]

Time to wrap up the Open Projects! Here is a checklist for you to follow so that you can make sure you have all the right elements in your blog post and your presentation. Organization Does your post have the correct organization by sections? See […]

As you work on your projects today, focus on this: What’s your math story? Remember that “math” doesn’t necessarily mean an equation or a calculation; it might be a description of the geometric properties of a mathematical object, why or how it is studied, what […]

So… our current plan is to work today, be ready to start sending final prints and doing final edits on Thursday, and then begin presentations in one week, on Tuesday. QUESTION: How are you doing? Will starting presentations on Tuesday be okay, or would you […]

// Print Stuff // Drafts: If you have something to print for your Open Project, obviously do that before anything else. Reprints: Some of you had First Fractals that were messed up a bit by rafts, or could have been printed larger to look better. […]

// Roundup // Has everyone completed their group ratings for the previous project? // Today // Every group tell me their progress since the last class (should be in your “First Steps” section) Continue working on your Open Projects and asking about the mathematical parts […]

Not much to say today except “let’s go!” Ground rules for the Open Projects Your goal is to find something to design and 3D print, and then talk about the math related to that object. You must design the object from scratch in Tinkercad or […]

For the last week you’ve been thinking about what you might want to investigate from the Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension book. Time for pitches and forming groups! // Ground rules // You must have different group members than last time […]

Today we keep going… more presentations, more nitpicky blog requirements, and we’ll slow down to make sure we have the math right. See the Timeline post from last class for details. NOTE: Final section of your blog post should now be called “How to Find […]

// Roundup // According to the Assignments page, by today’s class your Tinkercad Fractal post should be completed, with all formatting and content in line with the assignment guidelines. This week we’ll have final presentations for this project, and work on shoring up the math […]

Today we’ll work on finishing up the math for your blog posts; here’s the rundown: Quick reading quiz Help with length/area/volume calculations and fractal post (see my comments) Fractal dimension with the 3Blue1Brown fractal dimension video We’ll review some of what we watched last time (starting […]

// Roundup // According to the Assignments page, by today’s class you should have fixed any issues with your Tinkercad Fractal blog post, and added a new section documenting your first draft 3D print. // Today in class // If you have prints to send […]

Today we’ll continue with the Tinkercad Fractals project, and iterate on your first draft designs. If your designs are well-defined fractals then you’ll print them in class; if not then you’ll redo them and print after class. Discuss the following with your group members: Is […]

// Roundup // According to the Assignments page, by this morning you should have read the first part of the Fractals book and added a section to your First Fractals blog post about your printed fractal. The few of you who have not yet printed […]

Today in class we’ll continue where we left off on Tuesday, which means that we’ll be 3D printing the remaining First Fractals and discussing the corresponding blog post writeups. Maybe if we have time we’ll watch this video to get a quick overview of how the […]

// Roundup // According to the Assignments list, by class time today you should all be done with your Hello and First Fractal blog posts. Last week we talked about the Dragon Curve; if you missed any of that discussion then read last week’s Timeline posts […]

Today in class we will talk about the Dragon Curve, what makes it a fractal, and three different ways that it can be constructed. We’ll also print some extra copies so we can make a huge model out of them later. Although we’ll still be […]

Our first-day 3D print will be the Dragon Curve by UMF3D on Thingiverse, from the University of Maine at Farmington: This is actually only the “seventh iteration” of the fractal known as the Dragon Curve; like many fractals, the true Dragon Curve is the result of […]

Hello and welcome to MATH 103! There are four online services that we will use regularly in this class: Google, WordPress, Thingiverse, and Tinkercad. This post will help you create accounts for all of these services. Whenever you log into an account in the 3SPACE […]