I hope you all have had some happy family time (or otherwise) during these Christmas days! Now, I'm already going to turn your thoughts towards the changing of calendar year.
We're about to change from 2008 to 2009. If you'd like to have some mathematical fun with a new year's theme, check out MathNotation's Get Ready for Happy 41*7^2.
Basically, what you do for this "game" is try to find something special about the number 2009. Like the title of Dave's post tells us, 2009 factored is 41 × 72. So one thing you can do is ask the kids to factorize 2009.
Then, it's just up to you - or the students - to find anything interesting or special about the number 2009. Maybe they can explore the remainders when 2009 is divided by various numbers and find something that sounds "special". Maybe they can explore what kinds of sums they can make with it (it's 1004 + 1005 for example). Or, how about this sum: 2009 = 777 + 29 + 92 + 209 + 902. Or, you could simply ask students to write 2009 as a sum of four (or five or seven) whole numbers that are as close together as possible.
Read also Dave's post.
Yet another way to play a game with 2009 is explained at Math Forum's 2009 Year Game. here you will use the digits from 2009 to form all counting numbers from 1 to 100.
But, most importantly I want to wish you a prosperous & good year 2009! Mathematically and otherwise.
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