Maths by Email and Drawing Eggs

'Maths' is the British version of the word math. 'Maths by Email' comes from CSIRO, which is Australia's counterpart to the NSF (National Science Foundation). This was recommended by someone in the Living Math Forum, and I just got my first copy. I am delighted!

There are two topics that are easy enough for kids to understand, and sophisticated enough that I learned something new - fair pizza cutting and the shape of an egg.

I have chickens, and was especially interested in this:

Eggs do not start out egg shaped. While they are forming inside the chicken, they are very round, and they don’t have a shell. When the egg is almost ready, the chicken pushes it towards the end of the oviduct (the tube that eggs travel down to get out of the chicken). The squeezing makes the egg into an egg shape. While it is being pushed, the egg grows a shell around itself!

But the math was even better. They show how to make an egg drawing using 3 pins, and they show how egg shapes are related to ellipses.

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Happy Spring!