Bryan Bros and Units of Measurement

For the last couple years, one of my favorite sources of entertainment has been the wonderful world of YouTube Golf. Intending no disrespect to any other content creators, my favorite channels are the ones by Grant Horvat, the Bryan Bros (not to be confused with the twin tennis duo), Peter Finch, Bryson DeChambeau (of course), and Golf Girl Games (all of them absolutely, positively should have been in the Internet Invitational… but that’s another story for another day).

In a recent Bryan Bros video, my two interests collided. To make a long story short, a golf simulator projected that a tee shot on a par-3 ended 8 feet, 12 inches from the cup.

Co-host Wesley Bryan, to his great credit, immediately saw the computer glitch — this is an unusual way of saying the tee shot ended 9 feet from the cup. Hilarity ensued as the golfers held a stream-of-consciousness debate on the merits of metric and Imperial units. The video is below: the fun begins at the 21:41 mark and ends around 25:30.

Saturday Night Live: Washington’s Dream

Happy Fourth of July.

I’m a sucker for G-rated ways of using humor to engage students with concepts in the mathematical curriculum. I never thought that Saturday Night Live would provide a wonderful source of material for this effort.

Fun with units

Source: https://xkcd.com/2526/

Full lesson plan: Designing a model solar system

Over the summer, I occasionally teach a small summer math class for my daughter and her friends around my dining room table. Mostly to preserve the memory for future years… and to provide a resource to my friends who wonder what their children are learning… I’ll write up the best of these lesson plans in full detail.

This was a fun activity that took a couple of hours: designing a model Solar System. I chose the scale so that most of the planets would fit on a straight section of sidewalk near my house; of course, the scale could be changed to fit the available space.

For my particular audience of students, I also worked through the basics of the metric system as well as decimals.

This lesson plan is written in a 5E format — engage, explore, explain, elaborate, evaluate — which promotes inquiry-based learning and fosters student engagement.

Model Solar System Handout

Model Solar System Lesson

Post Assessment

P.S. For what it’s worth, the world’s largest model solar system can be found in Sweden.