Five sets of activities for students are included in this document. Each is designed for use in junior high and secondary school mathematics instruction. The first Note concerns mathematics on postage stamps. Historical procedures and mathematicians, metric conversion, geometric ideas, and formulas are among the topics considered. Successful…

Several math activities designed to teach patterns which can be found in arrays of 16 squares organized into a four-by-four pattern are presented in this issue of "Student Math Notes." The activities include: (1) determining how many squares and rectangles are contained in a four-by-four array; (2) figuring out the least number of lines…

Mathematics activities and facts related to pi are presented in this issue of "Student Math Notes." Included are: (1) an exercise based on Buffon's needle problem in which pieces of toothpicks are dropped onto a ruled surface; (2) a calculation of pi to 200 decimal places; (3) exercises related to Biblical and ancient Chinese…

Five sets of activities for students are included in this document. Each is designed for use in junior high and secondary school mathematics instruction. The first is concerned with the use of models in mathematics. The second contains a variety of activities involving polygonal numbers. The third set of activities includes a variety of games for…

Five sets of activities for students are included in this document. Each is designed for use in junior high and secondary school mathematics instruction. The first "Note" concerns magic squares in which the numbers in every row, column, and diagonal add up to the same sum. An etching by Albrecht Durer is presented, with four questions followed by…

Mathematics activities involving the construction of spirolaterals are presented in this issue of "Student Math Notes." Spirolaterals are figures in which sequences of line segments of differing lengths, connected by angles of a constant size, are drawn repeatedly to create a geometric design. The activities presented involve the…