After a while, someone in class usually gets the correct answer. The students are amazed to find that a person would have over 21 million dollars. This example shows the power of exponential growth.

The other day, I saw a good video about how bacteria communicate with one another given that they are so small and only one cell. Seems that they put out certain molecules to help them communicate. Check out the video from TED, it’s very interesting.

1. Carl Friedrich Gauss 1777-1855

Gauss is the undisputed champ in my book. His great genius was demonstrated at a young age. When he was in school, his teacher gave the class a task that he thought would take a long time to complete. His task was to sum the first 100 numbers. Gauss completed the task in a very short time. Much later, when the teacher checked the answers, Gauss had the correct answer. He summed the first hundred numbers not by addition, but by multiplication. He found that there are 50 pairs of 101. And 50 x 101 = 5050. He would always tell this story later in his life on how he was the first to complete the task.

He did not publish much and his motto of  ” few, but ripe” reflected his style of not publishing his mathematics until it was polished to perfection. Many times, other mathematicians would publish their findings and Gauss would say that he already knew about it. His work in number theory has shaped the way it is presented today.

2. Archimedes  cira 287-212 B.C.

Archimedes spent most of his productive years in Syracuse. Many engineering students  know him for his mechanical contraptions such as the screw pump, a claw that could flip a ship, and the heat ray that would use mirrors to burn a hole in a ship and sink it. In mathematics, he gave very close approximations of pi. Archimedes was always more interested in the theoretical studies than the more practical applications of his inventions. He died when a Roman soldier killed him after Archimedes refused to move away from his geometry problem that he was working on in the sand with a stick.

3. Newton 1643-1727

Newton gave us Newton’s laws of motion and of universal gravitation. He, along with Leibniz, developed  calculus. Many topics in physical science and math are related to Newton and all of his discoveries.

4. Bernhard Riemann 1826-1866

Riemann’s paper, published in 1859,  titled ” On the Number of Prime Numbers Less Than a Given Quantity” has sparked much interest and research into the question of how the prime numbers are structured. This is the greatest unsolved mathematics problem and students are real interested to know what the problem is about. This is a very interesting topic for a club like MathCounts were number theory and prime numbers come up all the time. I recommend the book Prime Obsession by John Derbyshire for a interesting read with some good history and mathematics.

5. Paul Erdos 1913-1996

Erdos was an interesting mathematician. He was very social and always tried to work with others. He was the opposite of Gauss who liked to work alone. He called young students “epsilons”, which means a little. He would give challenges to students to prove small theorems and pay them if they could prove it. He liked to travel around the world to work with other mathematicians and would say ” another roof, another proof”. His whole life was mathematics. He did not know how to drive or even how to do his laundry. He hated to waste time on anything but mathematics. Others who have published with him are given an Erdos number. The lower the number, the more directly related to working with him you are. I wish I had met him.

During the school year, I introduce an important scientist or mathematician almost every week. I believe it’s important to study the history of science and math as it puts the science content in perspective. I also try to give an equal amount of male and female scientists so all of my students may find a role model. Usually, I give the name of the scientist, a few items of what they did and the date and year of their birth. We memorize the year using the Peg system. I always give the birthday because it’s interesting to see the reaction of the students when they discover they share the same birthday as Einstein–pi day 3-14 , or Sylvia Earle, August 30th.

The Lesson Plan

Since we now have studied sixteen scientists, I came up with a new lesson plan that includes writing about the scientists and using the sweet sixteen NCAA college basketball format. First, we list all sixteen scientists on the Scientist16 sheet. The student then flips a coin to decide who moves to the next bracket. I’m sure you could find other ways to move the scientists to the next bracket. Students continue to do this until there is only one scientist left. The final scientist may or may not be the person that the student feels is truly the most outstanding, but their assignment is to write a report defending this scientist as the most influential in our society over the other fifteen scientists.

Discussion

This assignment may be a challenge as some of the scientists and mathematicians may not be as influential as Einstein, Curie or Edison. The goal is to get students to think about what is important and to develop their writing. The student should research the winning scientist to discover if any other important information is useful to help write the paper. For an 8th grade class, I specify that the paper should be a minimum of 250 words. For the 7th grade I specify one well developed paragraph of five to eight sentences. You can modify this based on the grade level and time needed to grade. Next time, I’ll give you the list of scientists and mathematicians that I use in my class. Are any of your favorites on the list? Till next time…

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