Welcome to the MathArt Journal Page!
During my MathArt courses, I encourage students to have a MathArt journal. Just like there are nature journals, a MathArt journal can be used in a very similar way. During the years of 2003 - 2007, I began two MathArt journals. I regularly went on weekly nature hikes looking for patterns in nature, recorded my observations in my journal and took thousands of photographs of plant and animal life as well as rocks and minerals. What was unique about these journals is I recorded observations from a mathematical point of view. This was such a fun seven year journey and my notebooks are something I will keep with me for a lifetime. Everytime I went out in nature, it was like going on a treasure hunt looking for nature's patterns including, spirals, concentric rings, triangles etc.
I hope that you will receive inspiration through the activities in this course as well as the Patterns in nature treasure hunt featured in my Living Geometry series of Circular Patterns in Nature: SCOCS (spirals, curves, ovals, circles and spheres) activity guide to begin your own journey of finding and recording nature's patterns that you find! Enjoy some of my MathArt journal pages below.
Natureglo
I hope that you will receive inspiration through the activities in this course as well as the Patterns in nature treasure hunt featured in my Living Geometry series of Circular Patterns in Nature: SCOCS (spirals, curves, ovals, circles and spheres) activity guide to begin your own journey of finding and recording nature's patterns that you find! Enjoy some of my MathArt journal pages below.
Natureglo
Journal Making Resources
Note: for the You Tube video tutorial, Bookbinding for Beginners: How to Make a Journal, you can make a larger version book by using a larger size mid-grade tagboard.
Journal Entry#1: Snowflake Geometry
- Choose one or more snowflakes of interest from any of the resources or other resources you find
- Sketch the snowflake(s) in your journal
- Write some descriptive thoughts about the snowflakes, their beauty, anything else inspirational you can come up with on your own such as poetry
- Geometric descriptions of the drawings
- Write interesting facts about snowflakes from the given resources
MathArt Journal Entry Investigative thoughts to consider as you read through these different websites:
You can investigate to find out the answers to the following:
- Different shapes of snowflakes
- Numbers of crystals which form each snowflake
- relation between the shapes (sides and angles) of different snowflakes
- Are there different snowflake sizes? What's the density of snow?
- Relationship between the shape of snowflakes and weather temperature
Natureglo's Journal Pages
Trout Lily Geometry
Trout Lily is a spring ephemeral found in the Eastern United States in early spring.
Birds Eye Wildflower Math
This enlarged pictures should give you a "bird's eye view" of some of the mathematics I observed on the beautiful and tiny Bird's Eye wildflower I found in the school yard.
Artistic Expression Journal Entry #2 -
The Chambered Nautilus
Guidelines: Below are different photographs of the chambered nautilus. Study each photograph and decide what kind of artistic expression you would like to do in your journal about the chambered nautilus. You can use the photos below to make sketches or other artwork from or come up with your own nautilus photographs from the web to get inspirations from. Here are some choices, but you're welcome to think of other expressions not listed. After you make your artistic expression of the nautilus, read over the wikimedia article about the chambered nautilus. Add some facts of most interest to you.
Materials:
- MathArt Journal
- drawing and coloring supplies
- a link on Wikipedia about the nautilus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nautilus
Journal Entry Ideas:
- A simple pencil drawing
- watercolor, acryllic painting
- a clay sculpture to photograph and glue or tape into your journal
- Your own creative ideas.
The Living Nautilus
Here is a beauty now!
The cross-section of a chambered nautilus.
Challenge: See if you can sketch the chambers accurately.
The side profile of a chambered nautilus
Challenge: See if you can sketch the zebra stripes pattern on the top side of the shell. How close can you make that rust brown color to the real color?
The Nautilus' Anatomy
Some of you may prefer making an anatomical drawing of the nautilus. This is a challenge in of itself!
Tessellations in Nature Journal Entry #3
Giant's Causeway not only exhibits nature's hexagons, but also tessellations.
Guidelines:
- Check out this link about nature's tessellations.
- The link from #1, at the top of the page reads, "Tessellations in nature are not mathematically precise, but rather approximate mathematical tessellations.... The following list describes what the photograph shows. Can you describe the tessellation in the photograph? You might want to try drawing a more mathematical version of it."
- Do you think that perhaps some of the tessellations are closer than others to mathematical perfection? If so, which pictures exhibit a very close perfection? Which ones would not be consider perfect tessellations and why?
- Choose one or more of Robert Fathauer's nature's tessellation photos that interest you.
- Sketch the tessellation(s) in your journal
- Write some descriptive thoughts about the tessellation, their beauty, anything else inspirational you can come up with on your own such as poetry.
Tessellations of Makoto Nakamura Journal Entry #4
I really felt inspired by Makoto Nakamura's tessellation "MathArt" work! I thought his work could also inspire some great student MathArt journal entries, so here goes!
Guidelines:
Guidelines:
- Check out Makoto Nakmura's Tessellation World website. Have a look around at the different menu bar options.
- Choose one or as many of the menu bar options to write about that you want. Ones I found of particular interest were the animations and the "Jigsau" puzzle. You can actually build different jigsaw puzzles. After experiencing any of the menu bar options, write about your experiences and impressions regarding Makoto's work.
- Perhaps his work may inspire you to make your own tessellations.
- Have fun!
Journal Entry #5 - M. C. Escher and Tessellations:
Wallpaper Group
Wallpaper Group
Introduction
When Escher visited the Alhambra in Spain during 1922, he became inspired by the art, including tessellations that decorated the architecture of this rather remarkable structure. The Alhambra is famous for exhibiting what's called the Wallpaper Groups. Wallpaper groups are two-dimensional symmetry groups which categorize patterns by their symmetries. This journal entry will be about this unique group. There are 17 distinct groups.
Guidelines
- Read through this Wikipedia article about the Wallpaper Group.
- Scroll down the article until you see the 17 Wallpaper Groups. Choose one or more Wallpaper Groups. Read through the information. Sketch the pattern that makes the wallpaper group unique.
- Write down facts about the particulars of the wallpaper group or groups.
- Color your sketches.
Journal Entry #6 - How Music Works - Visit the Mathematics and Music videos link and check out the video series with Mark Goodall. There is an opportunity for journaling about the video series in detail from that page.