Profs perform math balancing act

Sisters students play with a canilever. Photo by Conrad Weiler

Using meter sticks, Central Oregon Community College Professors Jack McCown and Doug Nelson offered a mathematical balancing act at the Thursday, October 24, Lunch and Learn class at Sisters COCC.

Forty community education students, in teams of four or five, were given several meter sticks and asked to stack them on tables, one on top of another, yet extending each successive meter stick to see how far off the table the final stick would extend.

With classroom noise levels reaching higher and higher decibel levels, the leading teams stretched out their final stick to 114 centimeters (about 45 inches) off the table.

"It's nice to know the math behind something simple," said Nelson. "This was an example of a cantilever and a series of geometric steps where each successive stick is placed approximately at the halfway point of the previous stick."

Next, the excited students were given paper and scissors and told to cut out the largest hole possible on their sheet of ordinary white typing paper. "Could you step through the hole in your paper?" asked McCown. "How many people could fit through your hole at the same time?"

Paul Bennett quickly snipped away and got his head easily through the paper. Arnold Funai didn't think he'd fit through his paper hole. Jim Smith was looking for legal size paper. One student was seen stepping through a large green sheet of poster paper.

McCown then demonstrated how cuts could be made in an ordinary sheet of typing paper yielding up to an 18-foot diameter and allowing a dozen people to fit through at one time.

"You did as good today as any second grade class," said Professor Nelson.