Numeracy

Numeracy in Material Studies

The class of 7A have begun the subject of Materials Studies this Semester. Their first activity is to research, design and build the Tower of Hanoi.

The Tower of Hanoi is a famous problem posed by a French Mathematician in 1883. What you need to do is move all the discs from the left hand post to the right hand post. You can only move one disc at a time and you can never place a bigger disc on a smaller disc. The aim is to move all the discs in the least possible number of moves. If you have 3 discs then the smallest number of moves is 7. An example of a 3 disc Tower of Hanoi is shown below.

The students have already completed research into learning about The Tower of Hanoi in a previous lesson. They needed to find out who designed it, when it was made and research 3 other wooden toys.

The next part of the process is for the teacher, Holly Jepson, to demonstrate to the students how to us the T square and Tri square rulers to accurately draw squares on a page that will become the blocks in the Tower of Hanoi. Using the rulers correctly is an essential learning as part of the process.

Lillian Kleinman explained to me that Tri squares are called squares as they have a right angle and four right angles of the same sized sides relates to a square. The students have also talked about how to convert mm to cm and vice versa.

The T square ruler is on the left and side and Tri square ruler is on the right hand side.

The next step in the process is for the students to start their own design of The Tower of Hanoi following the modelling by the teacher.  This is a trial run using paper for the students to accurately draw the blocks of varying sizes, posts and base. 

Photos of the students completing this initial  process are shown below.

The students in order from left to right are: Jomana Almaz, Kim Pillig, Lillian Kleinman, Sireen Kaiss, Megan Bowey, Hamish Jones, Brendan Davidson and Shanelle Langford. 

The initial designs are coming together as shown below.

The final step will be to cut the pieces for the Tower of Hanoi out of wood. The students will produce a product similar to below.

I thank Holly Jepson for letting me into her class to talk to the students and find out how Numeracy is embedded into Materials Science.

Michelle Galli

Numeracy Learning Specialist