Trail of the Month: Hünfeld City Trail

Johannes Balzer, a student teacher, has created a math trail in Hünfeld, Hesse. In the interview, he describes his “Hünfeld City Trail”. The Trail of the Month August can be accessed via the MCM app using the code 493631.

How did you get to know about the MathCityMap project?

I first became aware of the MathCityMap project in my didactic seminar in mathematics during my practical semester. I was fascinated by the project because it offers the opportunity to do mathematics with students in their living environment.

Please describe your Mathtrail.

My math trail is special because it contains tasks with different levels of difficulty and can therefore be used, for example, in a school context to repeat important content from lower secondary school. I created the Mathtrail for my own project as part of my studies. At the same time, I would like to make a contribution so that students and people interested in mathematics perceive mathematical contexts in their personal environment. Especially in the classroom, this can counteract the often hasty judgment “I’ll never need that again later anyway”. In addition, it can be motivating for learners to leave the familiar learning setting of the classroom and deal with mathematical topics independently and playfully in their own environment.

Which task do you find particularly interesting?

The task entitled “Fountain” asks for the weight of the granite stone from which the fountain is made. For the calculation, only the part of the fountain visible above the sidewalk is to be taken into account. The problem can be solved by dividing the granite stone into a cylinder and a cylinder stump and calculating their volumes. Adding the two volumes and multiplying them by the density of the granite stone gives the weight of the fountain we are looking for.

Further comments on MCM?

Shifting the place of learning from the school classroom or home study to the outdoors opens up numerous advantages from an infectious disease perspective, especially in these times of the Corona pandemic. Therefore, now is a good time to try out the MCM app and make math lessons (even) more varied and motivating.