The joy of cooking is electric! Seventh-grade math students in Cameron Youngman‘s class recently discovered how to calculate their way through a dough recipe to create a small motor circuit.
Youngman said, «Our current unit is on direct proportions, and we had a little extra time before the break. I researched an activity in which students make conductive dough to build a circuit. After planning with Middle School Science Teacher and Maker/Robotics Coordinator Branson Lawrence, we gave students just enough information to see what it would take to make 12 portions of dough. They were given the proportional relationship between salt and oil as well as flour and water and tasked with finding how much they would need of each ingredient for one portion of dough. Once they successfully found the appropriate ingredient amounts, they were able to make their dough and then build the circuit to connect a battery and a motor to the dough.»
To spice up the recipe, Middle School English Teacher Megan Caulfield unearthed some photos from yesteryear of Mr. Youngman and Mr. Lawrence to put on top of the spinning motors, making their heads spin once the circuits were connected.
Students dove into the project using multiple problem-solving strategies to reach the end goal.
Sophie St. Eve ’30 said, «I thought this was a very clever idea and a great way to get us out of the classroom. It was a perfect mix between fun and learning. I thought it was challenging but also helpful because it put math into a real-life perspective. Many students say, ‘Will we even use this [math] in real life?’ This activity proved that you will. It was an amazing activity, and I would love to do something similar in the future.»
Kaiden Simms ’30 enjoyed the project «because it’s not something we do every day in math class, and I like working together with my peers and having my brain work hard but having fun at the same time.»
Jules Poucel ’30 added, «We had a great time in math because we got to make some dough that conducted electricity, and with that, we made a couple of small circuits that powered a rotary motor, a small speaker, and an LED light. Currently, we are learning about direct proportional relationships, so in order to make the dough, we had to do some basic math to figure out the recipe.
«I found that working with electrical circuits in math was quite interesting, as well as the fact that we were doing many things that would normally only be done in science class. I found it really interesting and fun that we got to make circuits and have fun with what we made while also incorporating math. Incorporating fun and experimentation makes learning a subject a lot easier and way more fun.»
Lexi Essman ’30 had fun working in the makerspace. She said, «I enjoyed getting to help make the dough with my friends. We are learning direct proportions in class, so it connected to our unit, and we had to calculate how much of the ingredients we needed. It was overall a very fun perspective of what we were learning in class and connected it to a real-world problem.
Ultimately, this electrifying math experiment proved that learning can be engaging and memorable!