Open Make WK 8: Trouble with Trefoils
Tubular Trefoils In looking for cardboard craft ideas online I discovered "Math Monday" on the Make Magazine website. I was looking for a reasonably challenging activity that I could do with my students. The tubular trefoil grabbed my attention because in the past students have been fascinated by Möbius strips and the trefoil has the same inside out design. The task involves plenty of math concepts, from the geometric shapes involved to the measurement, fractional thinking, problem solving and attending to precision. For example, you need to draw lines every 1 and 19/32 on the strips. Our rulers are marked in 16ths , so I determined that my marks needed to be between 1 and 9/16 and 1 and 1 and 10/16, The same procedure needed to be applied to measuring a 17/32 line. I needed to determine the best cardboard to use. I wanted something stiff but flexible so I went with oak tag (handy because we have large sheets at school.) I tried cutting strips with a rotary cutter, a box c...