Kaleidoscopes

Hi!
Hopefully you be will getting the welcome letter I sent you in the mail soon. For those of you that have already gotten your letter and are visiting the blog for the first time . . . Welcome! Be sure you read the other blog postings, as there are lots of questions I'm asking you to find the answers for. As always, when you find the answer to one of the questions please post a comment to the blog. The comment won't post, because I don't want to ruin the answer for everyone else but I'll see it.

Do you own a kaleidoscope? Have you ever looked through one? If you haven't looked through a kaleidoscope in a while take the time to try to find one to look through. This time, after you are done enjoying the beautiful patterns you see, try to think about the shapes in terms of Geometry. How many mirrors do you think are in the kaleidoscope you are looking through? Try to visualize the lines of symmetry in the designs. Do the designs have rotational symmetry or are they reflection symmetric or both?

If you can't get your hands on a real kaleidoscope, I've included the links to some pretty amazing kaleidoscope pictures. Take a look at them and try to answer the questions in the paragraph above.

Finally, if you are enrolled in the class for the summer pass this blog address on to your parents, grandparents, aunts, & uncles, or even your mathematics or TAG teacher so they can follow along with what we will be up to this summer. You won't be able to find this blog by using search engines, so after you've come here once just bookmark the site. Once you get to campus I will be updating the blog daily with a summary of our class time & pictures of your hard work.

See you in less than a month!

Mrs. Degner