Hands-On Activity Workshop

As a Master Teaching Fellow at Math for America I have the privilege of participating in a variety of meaningful professional development opportunities. One such opportunity began this evening, with the first of a 3 session mini-course led by Dr. George Hart of Stonybrook University.

George first led us through a few drawing exercises -- draw a cube, draw a cube in an isometric projection style, draw a truncated cube, draw an icosahedron, draw a truncated icosahedron. At each step he gave us some pointers on key tricks to make our sketch a bit better. For example, judicious selection of the "front" can make the rest of the sketch so much easier.

In the background, we explored the relationship between vertices, faces, and edges. The point was not to derive Euler's formula, but it was a nice aside. (faces + vertices = edges +2) The real point though was to prepare us for a physical construction.

With our truncated icosahedron sketches as a guide, we took CD-R media and zip ties and began building a physical model of the icosahedron. CD with shiny side out represented the vertices, CD with dull side out represented the edges.

A good time was had by all.