Chapter 4 Review, Continued (Day 49)

This is what Theoni Pappas writes on page 298 of her Magic of Mathematics:

"The city of Konigsberg was founded by Teutonic knights in 1308, and served as the easternmost outpost of German power for over 400 years."

Konigsberg -- can it be? Yes, this is the first page of the subsection "The Konigsberg Bridge Problem Update," and indeed we're revisiting the problem from Lesson 1-4 of the U of Chicago text. And yes, I often used it as a first day of school lesson on the blog.

Here is part of how Pappas describes the problem in her book:

"A delightful tradition had developed among the residents of Konigsberg of taking a Sunday stroll along the city banks and islands while attempting to discover a path that would traverse all seven bridges without recrossing any bridge."

The lone picture on this page is a map of Konigsberg. We see the same picture in the U of Chicago text as well as my Lesson 1-4 worksheet, but this time the bridges have names. In alphabetical order:

-- Blacksmith Bridge
-- Green Bridge
-- "Guts" Giblets Bridge
-- High Bridge
-- Honey Bridge
-- Shopkeepers Bridge
-- Wooden Bridge

The island to which four of the bridges connect is called Kneiphof Island, while the river crossed by the bridges is the Pregel River.

Pappas continues the story of the Bridges of Konigsberg on the next page, so we'll read about it in tomorrow's post. Meanwhile, you can refer back to my September 5th post for the Konigsberg worksheet, as well as my First Day of School 2016 post to see how giving this problem in an actual middle school math class turned out.

Meanwhile, today is the second day of the Chapter 4 Review. Recall that Chapters 2 through 6 of the U of Chicago text are short, so we have an extra day to prepare for the test. I use this extra day to find resources related to the test online.

The page I found is from a Mrs. Hester, a middle school teacher. This post is dated 2013, and she hasn't posted anything new on her blog since 2015:

http://mrshester.blogspot.com/2013/09/unit-1-8th-grade-math.html

Notice that Hester begins her eighth grade year with transformations -- as we recall, Kate Nowak does the same. Again, this is due to the CCSS standard connecting transformations to slope.