I joined Ms. Ray’s maths club this year and it has been an absolutely amazing! I joined because I enjoy doing maths and the maths club is the place for anyone who wants to go beyond their normal curriculum. Every week, we work on areas of mathematics which we haven’t yet encountered but are exciting and helpful for our future studies in maths. Through maths club, I have been introduced to many other maths activities such as ASMA and SEAMC. Short for the American Scholastic Mathematics Association, ASMA is an international maths competition in which students need to solve total of 42 questions under a limited time. Some of the questions are challenging as they are different from the ones on textbooks and they stretch students’ minds. What I like about these questions is that they always lead us to knowledge outside of the classroom so after each round I always learn something new. Similar to ASMA, SEAMC (South East Asian Mathematics Competition) is another exciting maths competition. This year, I went to Jakarta for the competition with the FIS teams. We were assigned into groups and took part in various maths activities which, of course, involved thrilling competitions. During the three days, I met many interesting and smart people who are equally fascinated by mathematics. It’s great to see Lukas and Klaus winning a medal and it truly motivated me to challenge myself in maths and work harder. This SEAMC experience is unforgettable and I wish that I’ll be able to do it next year.

(More info on SEAMC here)

Dragon Maths by Jessica Y9

Dragon Maths is a maths competition that brings Y8 and Y9 students across all international schools in Hong Kong together to hone their maths skills and enjoy sharing their knowledge with others.  This year’s competition was held at GSIS on the 8th of March, and I was delighted to have been selected as one of four Y9s to represent our school, along with Akash Rajesh, Bharat Namboodiri, and Arthur Wong.  We were given a total of 36 questions one by one, and were instructed to finish as many as we could under a time limit of 45 minutes.  Although we found them very challenging to solve correctly in time at first, by the time we’d gone through a few questions and got into a rhythm, we really started to collaborate and put our heads together, and we all enjoyed it immensely.  I think it was a great opportunity for us to take risks, especially as we were given the chance to try again.  Working together with classmates to compete against students from other schools really gave me an incentive to do my best and push my limits.  After seeing the strength of some students from other schools, I know that I’ve got to do my best to catch up to them!

Some of what we’re learning… 

Möbius Strip

A Möbius Strip is a surface with only one side and only one boundary. A line can be drawn along the centerline of the loop and would go around twice (both “sides” are covered) before coming back to its starting point. Cutting along the centerline of the loop creates one longer band, not two. However, in Bharat’s case, his mobius strip became two bands and was knotted. This is because the Möbius Strip not cut along its centerline but at one third of the way in from the edge (parallel to it).

  

Kepler’s conjecture

The best way of packing Maltesers! The Kepler conjecture, named after mathematician Johannes Kepler, is a mathematical conjecture about sphere packing in three-dimensional Euclidean space. It says that no arrangement of equally sized spheres filling space has a greater average density than that of the cubic close packing and hexagonal close packing arrangements.

  

 

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