Monday, July 28, 2008

English - Jungle Adventure

An endangered species - The California Condor

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4afbauvYBI

Watch as the condor cruises beautifully
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MuBYn928cc


Observe how the wolves lope as they 'run'.





.

Saturday, July 19, 2008

Optical Illusion

Keep in mind that this is a static image. It is not animated in any way. However, as your vision moves back and forth, the middle area will seem to move towards the centre (contracting) and the outer edges will seem to be move away (expanding) from the centre. Also worth noting - if you fixate on a point in the centre and not move your eyes this anomalous motion will stop.
Sea Sickness
(Update: the web seems to have named this"The Purple Nurple Optical Illusion")
Walter Anthony(c)2007

WONDERS OF MATH - Fractals



This is a Fractal


The word FRACTAL was invented by Benoit Mandelbrot.
Fractals are interesting because as you zoom in closer, the pattern is just as beautiful and complex as when you start.

Besides beauty, fractals offer mathematical explanations about nature. If you look, you can see fractal patterns in landscapes, plants and more.



Fractals offer artists a way to create imaginary landscapes on the computer. Many movie backgrounds are created using fractal graphics.

Monday, July 14, 2008

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Putting up our best behaviour

We had visitors at our one and a half hour session! They are students from China and there are 15 of them. 15 of our friends were chosen to partner with them. We are a helpful bunch. While the friends who worked with the overseas guests tried their best to explain the words and terms in both English and Chinese, the rest of us helped each other along in getting logged on to the website we wanted and completed our tasks.

We had an interesting session on using online learning platform to complete our given assignments. We read a story on a folktale in India and did exercises like cloze passages, grammar and vocabulary. Some of us were excited as we scored well for the exercises but some of us were dissappointed as we did not do as well as we wanted. But as Ms Goh says, 'Never Give Up and we'll continue to soar towards the sky.'

We were also introduced to a game called the 'Lemonade Stand'. It allows us to decide on our inventory (the items we need for setting up the store), our recipe according to the weather and our price. At the end of the day, we will be able to see the number of customers we manage to satisfy. Hopefully, we can find out the secret recipe to a moneymaking lemonade stand!

Monday, July 7, 2008

Fractions


Identify the NU MER A TOR and DE NO MI NA TOR

http://www.learningupgrade.com/mathup/index.htm

Lyrics to the song

We had one whole delicious apple pie
And 5 hungry people to share that pie
We divided that pie into
5 EQUAL slices
(ya ma, 5 slices)



My share was one slice of that pie
Of the 5 equal slices of the whole pie
I got ONE-FIFTH (1/5) of that pie
And that’s a FRACTION!
A PROPER FRACTION

A fraction has a DE-NO-MI-NA-TOR that goes below the line
Shows how many slices the whole pie has (Five!)
A fraction has a NU-MER-A-TOR that goes above the line
Shows how many slices I have (One!)
(Watch me now)

When the NUMERATOR is greater than the DENOMINATOR
That is what we call an
IMPROPER FRACTION
(thirteen over four)13/4

Sometimes we have a whole number
Together with a fraction
A whole number and a fraction – a… a MIXED NUMBER…..
Three and one-fourth
And that’s a FRACTION!!!!..... (ya!)

(From learningupgrade.com)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Let's see if we can form a fractions from shaded fractions strips

http://www.visualfractions.com/EnterFraction.html

... and now with fraction discs

http://www.visualfractions.com/EnterCircle.html