Monday, April 14, 2014

Minecraft Math!

Recently, Mrs. Yollis' class has become a BYOT (Bring Your Own Technology) room. During our geometry math unit,  students were building in Minecraft.

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Guest Post by Shayna 






During math,  students were allowed to make solid figures on Minecraft. First I made a cube, and then set my goal to make a square-base pyramid with five flat faces. However,  there was a problem. In Minecraft, it will not let you tilt a single cube, so I could not get the flat triangular faces I wanted.  I ended up with a stair-step square-base pyramid.  

As I was building it, Mrs. Yollis mentioned that it was hard to count how many cubes were on each level because they were all one color. She recommended that I make each cubic unit a different color, so the other classmates could count how many were in each layer. 

I started out with three colors, diamond, iron, and lapid lazuli. Then when I was almost done, two of the same colors were side by side making it difficult to count. So, I tried adding a fourth color, black obsidian. It worked! 


I took these pictures as I got closer to being done. When I finished I took a final screen shot. My pyramid had seven layers. 






As you can see, I am starting to color each layer. The top cube is diamond colored. 

The top layer is one cubic unit. 
The second layer is a 3 x 3 = 9 cubic units. 
The third layer is a 5 x 5 = 25 cubic units.




The fourth layer is a 7 x 7 = 49 cubic units.
The fifth layer is 9 x 9 = 81 cubic units. 





How does the pattern continue? 

What is the volume of my pyramid?




We noticed that the even square numbers (2 x2 and 4 x 4) were skipped. 

Later, we built my pyramid with the one inch blocks that Mrs. Yollis had. We also build a pyramid using all the square numbers. Then I took a picture of that and put it with the others.


In Minecraft, each square face must line up with another square face. That was the reason I could NOT build the pyramid on the right.   




Have you ever built a solid figure in Mincraft?

Your pupil,
Shayna

3 comments:

  1. Dear Shayna & Mrs. Yollis,

    What marvelous Minecraft math! I have made some solid figures in minecraft. I have experimented with a cube, rectangular prism, and a square based prymid. Other times I will just fool around in Survival. One of my best worlds was when I used a rectangular prism as my house! All I had to do was build it, make a door, some steps, and eureka! I had a house.

    In the world Survival, creepers figured out a way to get in to my cube house, but thankfully I had a iron sword handy. I think Minecraft is a great way to learn and it's a great way to be creative. When I built my cube house, I made it out of coal. It was a pretty harsh Survival world too. Sadly I accidently deleted both my good minecraft worlds mistaking them for others. Here's a tip: Do not label all of your worlds "My World". It is very hard to tell the difference :-)!

    I have not brought my own device yet, but I hope to closer to the end of the year. I am looking forward to learning on my technology.

    I think the volume of your square based pyramid is 169 square units. Am I correct? You add 9+25=39+49+81=130. Mrs. Yollis has two posts about Minecraft on her 365 blog.

    I hope we get to do minecraft in class sometime again!

    Warmly,

    Peter

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dear Shayna,

    I love to play Minecraft because it is fun to know how to survive in it and in the real world. I think you use it in a creative way. I have the Xbox 360version. How long did it take to build your square based pyramid?

    From,
    N♔ck

    ReplyDelete
  3. Dear Shayna,

    That is very creative. My favorite game is Minecraft because you build houses, mine, get gold, and have armor! I have the Xbox 360 and I have live. On that there are Endermens! Oh no!

    From Ad♔m

    ReplyDelete

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