Not Your Typical Sponge…
Posted by Lloyd Mitchell
The sixth grade class recently embarked on a new project-based learning activity, constructing a Menger Sponge also known as a fractal curve. The shape, as constructed, has an infinite surface area but zero volume! The Menger Sponge is built in levels: a level 0 sponge is a single cube; a level 1 sponge contains 20 single cubes; level 2 contains 20 level 1 sponges or 400 individual cubes; level 3 contains 20 level 2 sponges or 8,000 individual cubes! When we started this project, our goal was to construct a level 1, and we exceeded that in the very first week of the project! Students took cards home to construct in their free time. One student even went home and asked parents to collect enough cards to construct a level 1 all on her own! The persistence shown by all of the 6th graders has been impressive. Try to imagine getting all the way to the end of the level 1 and having it collapse – that happened! But they got right back to work and rebuilt. Now the students are on to the next goal – working in teams to construct a level 2 sponge!
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