Sun, moon and stones

“Can we go on a trip?”

It’s the perennial cry of every class, and educationally it pays dividends, but mathematics students tend to lose out to more field based subjects like Biology, Geography, Environmental Studies and English literature.

Where can a maths class go, that is both useful and enjoyable?

Today I spent the afternoon and evening with a mathematics lecturer Ivor McGillivray, a film team, a group of students studying maths at GCSE level and A-level, two laptops and an electronic theodolite, at Stonehenge - the megalithic ruin on Salisbury Plain in south western England. The focus was the history of sun and moon in mathematics, and practical activity was central.

It was an eye opening trip, inspirational and remarkably successful in pedagogic terms.

It’s not my story, so I won’t go into detail now, but I hope to persuade Ivor to write an article for us.

Photographs at left (click them for a larger view) show, from top…

• Calculating the height of a standing stone.

• Cross checking measurements for accuracy.

• Setting up the theodolite.

• Relaxing between tasks.

[Contributed by Felix Grant]