Reflection on the Math-Art Project


1. My experience on doing the project: 

While each of our group members was browsing through the Mathematical Art Galleries, Vincent introduced us the artwork done by Dr. Clayton Shonkwiler. His artwork involves two block letters as n-sided polygons and shows very complicated traces between those letters. Although the art piece itself looks beautiful and interesting for us to replicate, I, at first, was a bit hesitant not only because does it involve Stiefel manifolds which I am not quite familiar with, but also I found it difficult to relate to high-school-level mathematics. Thankfully, through discussions with my group members, I could see some potential mathematics that might be appropriate for my future students.


2. The potential mathematics learning involved & the place that the project might have in classroom teaching and learning:

Although our group did not fully understand the math behind the artwork, we were able to identify some potential mathematics that can be taught in our future classrooms. The first concept is obviously geometry. As long as students make their block letters in n-side polygons with same number of vertices, then students will be able to produce their artwork with the use of the Mathematical code that is posted on Dr. Chonkwiler’s website. To make the activity more interesting, students get encouraged to create their favourite numbers or even cartoon characters in n-side polygons. Also, from the artwork, we can introduce students the Euler’s equation, that is (number of vertices) – (number of edges)  + (number of faces) always equals to 2. Secondly, this artwork is great to introduce the Cartesian plane in our future classrooms, representing shapes as points and lines, and describing points using coordinates. Some exercises that students can do is to list the coordinates of the points of the shapes that they want to draw, and they are encouraged to plot those points on the plane and see what shapes they make.

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