One of my fondest memories of high school was Math class. If I could find my yearbook, I’d know more names. Maybe if I find it later, I’ll go back and put them in, but for now, the only teacher whose name I remember is Mr Oakes. He was our Trig and Geometry teacher at Pennfield.
I took him in my junior and senior years. He started a “Math Club” and I was the president. I think I can point my love of math back to those years. At the end of each year, the school would have an assembly in which they honored the leading students in each major area of education. Guess who won the Math award his senior year. Yep. I still have that award. It’s a little metal charm bracelet size medal with a Math symbol etched on it. It’s in a box somewhere in the house and one of these days, I shall find it.
One thing I especially remember was the Math Fair we held in Mr Oakes room. I think it was for some kind of open house for the parents. We set up all kinds of displays, kind of like a science fair and demonstrated all different aspects of Math for our parents. Barb asked me if my Mom or Floyd came to it and I can’t honestly remember, but I doubt it.
At the fair, I was in charge of building a giant 3-D hyperbola made of string. It will be extremely hard to describe, but I’ll try. I should make a video of building one and put it on youtube and maybe people would watch it. This is what you do. You draw a large circle on the ceiling of the classroom (I remember it being about 3 feet across). Then you draw another circle on the floor exactly under the first circle. Then you thumb tack string to the top circle and run it down to the bottom circle, but at a slant. Not straight down. You do this every inch or so until you’ve attached string to the entire circle. The strings are all straight, but by slanting them, if you step back from the structure, you can see a hyperbolic curve that is formed by the string. You can do this on paper, too, but in 3-D, it was really cool.
That night was truly one of the highlights of my high school career. Man, were we geeks.
Dad
I love my geeky dad!