We took our 'Maths Tales' theme on the road this week, making an appearance at the Edinburgh International Book Festival's Teen Takeover Day with author and scientist Emily Dodd. At our Maths Week Scotland pop-up stall in the Schools Marketplace, students had the opportunity to create some maths inspired poetry.
Our colleagues from the National Museums Scotland learning team had brought along 'mystery' objects, including pieces of Tektite and Libyan Desert Glass, and some Carbonaceous Chondrite (stony meteorites), as well as a pair of screws used to hold together bones in surgery.
The students were invited to examine the mystery objects and try and guess what they were, then use what they had found out about the objects as inspiration to write a short poem. We had two different poetry prompts for them to choose from.
Firstly, we challenged the students to write a Pi-ku. A pi-ku is a variation on haiku with a mathematical twist. Instead of the traditional 5-7-5 haiku pattern, the syllables in a pi-ku follow the number of digits in the mathematical constant pi (π): 3-1-4. We had some really creative results, here are just a few:
The second challenge was to write a communal poem inspired by triangular numbers. A triangular number counts objects, represented by rows of dots, in an equilateral triangle. The first row has 1 dot, the second row has 2 dots, the third row has 3 dots and so on.
For our poems, we had 1 word in the first line of the poem, 2 words in the second line, 3 words in the third and so on. Each line was written by a different young person. Again, these poems were inspired by the objects they had examined.
We ended up with some really creative results. Here are a few of our favourite communal triangular poems:
If you would like to have a go at writing your own maths inspired poetry, check out our previous post to find out more about how to write a pi-ku. Don't forget to share your maths poems with us on Bluesky or Facebook, and use the hashtag #MathsWeekScot.
To celebrate World Book Day, we’re thrilled to welcome back award-winning Glasgow-based author Maisie Chan. Last year, Maisie joined our Maths Tales programme to discuss her novel Danny Chung Does Not Do Maths and answer questions from enthusiastic pupils. We’ve followed up with Maisie for an exclusive interview, perfect for those who missed the session or had more burning questions.
