The American Mathematical Society is posting a new video each day of April with the theme Mathematics, Mystery and Magic. The theme is a tribute to Martin Gardner, who introduced topics in recreational mathematics to a wide audience for more than half a century.

On April 1st, seventh graders in Mrs. Haseltine’s class learned about creating magic squares. The next day’s video presented the challenge of braiding a three-strand object with closed ends. The students wanted to try the experiment, but paper would not have been strong enough. Always resourceful, Ben suggested using the boys’ ties. They were quite surprised when I agreed! After choosing three ties that were close to the same length and securing both ends, Clara was responsible for braiding one end so that there were six crossovers. After much twisting and turning, we were able to straighten the other end.

While Clara and Carson attempted to find the solution to “The Teacup Problem,” which also involves untangling, the other students were racing to complete 4×4 magic squares using the methods from the previous day’s video. Some of the sixth graders learned the algorithm for creating magic squares with odd dimensions, and spent a day building increasingly larger ones. Mental math tricks, Fibonacci numbers, geometrical vanishes and hexaflexagons are just a few of the other topics to explore.