Fractal Kitty (Page 3)

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Evening Grosbeak navigating a prime constellation.

Evening Grosbeak

When contemplating a spirally constellation of twin primes, you may ask, “Just how many are there? – Infinite?” The Twin Prime Conjecture would say so.

a bird with 144 beaks in a thought cloud of a kitty with the words "kitty contemplates a new species."

Gross-Beak

I got side tracked when thinking about the next math bird in a series and thought “I’m long overdue for a kitty comic.” Dozen=12 and Gross=144

chickadee with a slope field and the derivate dy/dx = 2co(x/3) with the rollercoaster flight sketched

Chestnut-backed Chicka-dy/dx

Another Math bird in the series! These little chickadees make the cutest noise. They have had a brood every year in the neighbors gum tree. When I see their rollercoaster flight, I think of slope fields.

Mathober 2021

Prompts are at the bottom of this post and the information for Mathober is here. I used ink and code for this daily practice and really enjoyed seeing everyone’s posts on their blogs and twitter. Let’s plan for next year. Prompts will be generated in September of 2022. Ink: Day 1 – Multiplicity Day

a dead cottonwood standing tall and reaching to the sky

Fall 2021 Update

As the school year kicks off and all my classes are on a roll, I find myself posting less. So, here is an update of what’s been going on in my world. Poetry I have continued my practice of posting my haiku practice every 19 days. Click here for latest set of haiku. As usual […]

pair of sand pipers on parallelepipeds with an ocean in the background and the matrix fro the volume.

Western Sand Parallelepiper

Another Math bird in the series! This one was inspired by my 17yr old discussing her math homework of deriving the volume for a parallelepiped. So of course It spawned the thought of parallelepiped sand castles.

a list of mathober prompts

Get Ready for Mathober!

This year’s Mathober pieces will be posted here. Last year I posted prompts for the first year of Mathober when I wanted to do some daily doodles with no strings attached. The activity was a lot of fun. There were some some great pieces from John Golden and Foldster on Twitter. Prompts this year hav

Spiraling Vaux’s Swifts

Spiraling Vaux’s Swifts

Just like solar eclipses, Vaux’s swifts really are a life experience. Watching them funnel into a chimney in a vortex of flitting feathers is just amazing. I had the wonderful experience of watching them funnel into the chimney at dusk in Salem, Oregon (my home). So here is the next math bird in the

Diatom Sketch

I pondered diotoms in my spare time today and made this. I hope to play some more as time allows to expand this. Click to change images (randomized). A gallery is included below. Enjoy. A full page view is here. See the Pen diatom1 by Sophia (@fractalkitty) on CodePen.

a birdhouse with violet green swallow head packed like a gasket and the math written on the house with parents flying

Packing Violet Green Swallows

I enjoyed watching the swallows this summer. I couldn’t help but imagine that they were packing circles in their little birdhouse portal. Life is full of such precious moments.

A pileated woodpecker with morse code and the branches of letters with the waves shown in a forest

Pileated Woodpecker

Another math bird in the series. I am pretty convinced that pileated woodpeckers communicate in their own form of morse code. I wonder what their frequency is when they are excavating?

hexagonal tiles with kolam designs laid out with rotational symmetry

Playing with Kolam Tiles

I attended a wonderful math art workshop that went over the tradition and art form of Kolam. Siddhi Desai and Deepa Bharath had a wonderful presentation and activities to draw on dotted paper to create amazing designs. I look forward to playing with rice flour designs this weekend. One take away tha

a western tanager on oranges peeling them to make map projections in the background with drawing tools

Western Tanager

Another math bird in the series. I associate these tanagers with oranges, summer, and warmth. This year I enjoyed seeing them in our woods as I sat on a fallen white oak in the middle of a forest.

Code of the Rings Published in NCTM

Miscellaneous - interviews, ideas, and more

Code of the Rings Published in NCTM

This month the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) – For the Love of Mathematics featured Code of the Rings. A PDF of the article is below. To view it on NCTM’s website click here. I am grateful for this opportunity to share. After note: As I approach my 40th birthday, friends and fam

Cardinality Cardinal

Cardinality Cardinal

Another math bird in the series. This one I struggled with what to do and include, feel free to send any comments my way. I am still contemplating if it is really done. I miss hearing cardinal calls from when I lived in the east and watching them out on my grandpa’s farm with their […]

Manifold of Me (a self portrait)

Miscellaneous - interviews, ideas, and more

Manifold of Me (a self portrait)

If you want some notes/insight, here are some drafted below. Skip them if this piece speaks to you – you may find your own meaning and you don’t need mine.

Coded Optical Illusions

Coded Optical Illusions

I had a great time this summer doing art and professional development with Twitter peers. On one of the days, Ellen Thomson hosted activities with Optical Illusions. This got me thinking of all the ways this could be done with coding + math groups. There are two approaches I take in coding groups. T

Belted Kingfisher

Belted Kingfisher

The Belted Kingfisher catches Fish Curves on a King Graph. (This image was updated with a fix after the initial post) Sources: https://mathworld.wolfram.com/KingGraph.html [https://mathworld.wolfram.com/KingGraph.html], https://mathworld.wolfram.com/FishCurve.html [https://mathworld.wolfram.com/Fish

Playing with patterns

Miscellaneous - interviews, ideas, and more

Playing with patterns

I have been enjoying summer communities in math learning. Howie Hua has been hosting a wonderful group on Wednesdays, and last week Shelby Strong with Stronger Math shared Fawn Nguyen’s Visual Patterns resource and I had to play with creating some randomly generated patterns (below). These patterns

A spotted towhee sits on a wooden tau with vines growing on it and a few branches and a son that looks like the unit circle w

Spotted Tau-hee

Happy Tau Day! I have created another math bird piece for today with the inspiration of Spotted Towhees on my morning walk.

Space-Pigeonholes Imagined

Space-Pigeonholes Imagined

The Pigeonhole Principle merged with the contemplation of black holes today. I envisioned Fractal Kitty at the whiteboard with this one, but went without the kitty today – enjoy.

“Two-Body” Problem: Barycenter vs Waxwing

“Two-Body” Problem: Barycenter vs Waxwing

After watching the neighborhood waxwings consume their fill of berries prior to moving on, I pondered a different kind of a two-body problem:

Overdue May Update

Miscellaneous - interviews, ideas, and more

Overdue May Update

Well, I am overdue for a post. This year was busy. I taught 11-13 classes per week on top of study halls and homeschooling 3 kiddos. I have found my creative energy slightly depleted. That being said, I got a lot done in May and hope to reset in June. 101 days of code complete! […]

In a Loop

Sometimes you just feel like you are in a loop…

i-bis

i-bis (white faced ibis) on the complex plane.