Month:

How Much Gold is There?

• September 9

Perhaps the most eye-catching feature of Dallas Fair Park is the gold-leaf wrapped Tower Building. Yes, that is real gold! Because of the allure and attraction of gold, we definitely want to ask, “How much is all of that gold on the Tower Building worth?” Before we go through the calculations, stop and take a moment to guess. Is it 1,000 dollars worth of gold? $10,000? A million dollars? Let’s figure it out. Supplementary Activity Guides for this video to extend student learning for K-12 g... CONTINUE READING

How Far Can We See?

• September 9

The Texas Star is a ferris wheel that has delighted many families from 1985 onward. As one of the tallest such structures in North America, we wonder, exactly how far can you see from the top? Students and faculty from Greenhill School created this walk stop and contributed this content for all to enjoy! Supplementary Activity Guides for this video to extend student learning for K-12 grade levels are freely available here:... CONTINUE READING

What is Art Deco?

• September 9

Fair Park, a state and National Historic Landmark, has the largest collection of 1930s Art Deco style architecture in the United States, located on 277 acres. In this video, we briefly discuss what art deco is and how it is related to STEM.... CONTINUE READING

How does the pendulum move?

• September 9

A high school student at Hockaday School created a campus STEM walk for elementary students to enjoy. In this walk stop, she looks at the large pendulum the school is fortunate enough to have.... CONTINUE READING

What is the golden ratio?

• September 9

A high school student at Hockaday School created a campus STEM walk for elementary students to enjoy. In this walk stop she explores the golden ratio that she sees in the dance studio on campus.... CONTINUE READING

What is Intuitive Wayfinding?

• September 9

Airports can be bustling places, filled with thousands of people all trying to get to where they need to go all at once. Interior designers can help direct this flow by emphasizing intuitive wayfinding in their work – subtle clues and markers incorporated in a space's design that make navigation easier to naturally understand. In Love Field, this involves patterns in the tiles and ceilings that help guide travelers to where they need to go. This video was supported by the City of Dallas Office... CONTINUE READING

How High Does it Climb?

• September 9

The sculpture Venture, by Alexander Liberman, is composed of several steel tubes, stacked toward the sky. At such a great height, measuring its size by hand can be a challenge; instead visual estimation must be used. Additionally, the shapes comprising Venture are discussed, involving various ellipses and special forms that can even be recreated at home! This video was supported by the City of Dallas Office of Cultural Affairs. Supplementary Activity Guides for this video to extend student learn... CONTINUE READING

How does geometry relate to the Campanile Windows?

• September 9

The stained glass of Campanile Window, by Octavio Medellin, contains irregular quadrilaterals – four-sided shapes with sides of different lengths – interspersed with lines and triangles in varying angles. In combination, all these lines create a sort of linear perspective, mimicking the way images shrink and converge as they recede from a viewer. Despite being made of flat, static glass, those design elements give the piece a clever way to convey a sense of energy and motion that matches wel... CONTINUE READING

What Mathematical Differences Do We See?

• September 9

The four individual works that make up Campanile Window have a similar-looking structure to each other, but are not identical. Methods of quantifying some of their differences mathematically are discussed, analyzing color, lines, and interior shapes. This video was supported by the City of Dallas Office of Cultural Affairs. Supplementary Activity Guides for this video to extend student learning for K-12 grade levels are freely available here:... CONTINUE READING

What is an Irregular Quadrilateral?

• September 9

Dr. Glen Whitney, founder of the National Museum of Mathematics in New York and walkSTEM advisor, discusses some of the shapes within the Campanile Window installation at Dallas Love Field airport, and how they’re used to support and integrate the irregularly-shaped windows with the more classically rectangular shapes of the ticketing hall in which they've been hung. This video was supported by the City of Dallas Office of Cultural Affairs. Supplementary Activity Guides for this video to exten... CONTINUE READING