Knowing+the+Moon

**Math as an Area of Knowing**
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With the Moon as our starting point to link the Ways of Knowing (WOK's - Think PERL) and the Areas of Knowing (AOK's - Think IB Hexogram - Math / Natural Sciences / Human Sciences / Arts / History) we will a) make sense of some of the Math questions raised in our Moon Perception exercise and b) have fun interpreting some quotations about Math as an AOK.

Copy the following onto your Math page and add your thinking:

A. Record here 3 Math Questions raised in class that interest you. Then under each write your answer/s and reflect on your process for expanding your knowledge in that area.

Q1. How many moons would fill the earth? ( in terms of liquid volume? Spherical volume?) Approximately 49 to 50.

Q2. What is the velocity of the moon? (Relative to what other object/s?) About 4.627 m/s

Q3. How many craters are there in the moon? (Define crater – by shape, size, …..) Approximately 300,000 craters (with diameters down to 1 km) are visible from ground based telescopes.

B. Read the following Math quotations (some you may have heard before) and below three of them, write your interpretation of what you believe the author is trying to say.

"Mathematics is neither physical nor mental, it's social." Reuben Hersh, 1927- He says so because mathematics can go beyond science and it could even become part of the culture.

"Mathematics is the abstract key which turns the lock of the physical universe." John Polkinghorne, 1930 - Polkinghorne is trying to convey that through mathematics, anything can be calculated from how many apples are in a basket to how big the universe is.

To speak freely, I am convinced that it (mathematics) is a more powerful instrument of knowledge than any other..." Rene Descaret, 1596-1650 He says so because it is possible to prove mathematics while not being able to prove other AOKs like language for example you can prove the 1+1=2 yet you can't prove that any word actually means what people or the dictionary say it means.

Why is the moon represented as light?