5th Grade: Thales

In 5th grade we have been learning what it means to be  philosopher and the tools you need in order to think more like a philosopher.  Through our learning we discovered that the earliest philosophers were also our first mathematicians and scientists, because they were the ones asking questions, wondering, not willing to look at things through only one lens.

This semester we are going to spend time investigating many of the early contributors to the fields of mathematics and science.  We started with Thales, oft referred to as the Father of Geometry.  We started by talking about the fact that a problem can only be a true problem if we are not sure how to go about solving it.  A novel concept to many of these kids! 

The problem:  Find the height of the light poles in the back parking lot, using only a yard stick.  You must be safe, so no climbing the light pole. Yes, I did have to explicitly say this. 🙂  The problem was inspired by a story about Thales figuring the height of the Great Pyramid in Egypt. Below you will find a video of the kids thinking as they attempted to find a solution.  

On the day we were attempting to solve the light pole problem, it was a cold Texas morning and the kids were quite distracted by the icicles on the tree. Can you see them?  Funny, what excites us in South Texas. 

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In the coming weeks I will post some video of the kids explaining how to solve this problem and how to prove two of Thales theorems.  Below is a picture of one of my student’s practice with Thales theorems: 1. any triangle inscribed inside a semi circle will be a right triangle 2. the opposite angles of any two intersecting angles will be equal.

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