Exhibition ServicesFlip It, Fold It, Figure It Out! Playing with Math

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	Photo courtesy of Museum of Life and Science, Durham NC

Flip It, Fold It, Figure It Out! Playing with Math

Flip It, Fold It, Figure It Out! offers engaging activities with patterns, shapes, and sizes that entice visitors to "play with math." Visitors can tile shapes into pleasing patterns, fold an origami model, and compare how much different containers hold—exercising, in the process, skills in measurement, arithmetic, and geometry.

Flip It, Fold It, Figure It Out! is organized into seven clusters of related components. Each cluster comprises a main activity area surrounded by a collection of related objects and images—from blueprints and telescope lenses to sneakers and rugs. These collections, gathered from around the world, illustrate how architects and product designers, craftsmen and scientists, extend the same skills that visitors are using to create works that fill our everyday lives and the world around us.

Photo courtesy of Museum of Life and Science, Durham NC

Eighteen components invite visitors to:

• Create quilt and tile patterns
• Experiment with drum beat patterns
• Identify three-dimensional mystery shadow shapes
• Create their own shadows
• Fold origami
•Explore volume concepts, using containers of different shapes
• Play with reflective symmetry

Developed by the Museum of Life and Science, Durham, North Carolina, with the support of the National Science Foundation, this 1,500-square-foot exhibition addresses NSF’s priority for enhancing mathematic learning. The interactive activities are also aligned with standards set by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM).

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