Circumcircles

Free Math animations on the web. 

Circumcircle is a circle that passes through every vertex of a triangle.

https://www.mathopenref.com/trianglecircumcircle.html

Play with the vertexes to change the size of the triangle and change the circumcircle. 

Right triangles are a special case:

In the case of a right triangle, the hypotenuse is a diameter of the circumcircle, and its center is exactly at the midpoint of the hypotenuse. This is the same situation as Thales Theorem, where the diameter subtends a right angle to any point on a circle's circumference. (www.mathopenref.com).

Gone Without a Trace by Mary Torjussen

Hannah's life is upended when her boyfriend Matt disappears. Hannah lives in the Wirral peninsula and is on the fast track for promotion at the company where she works.

Matt doesn't just disappear. He obliterates his presence by taking every single item he owns from her apartment and deleting every photo and text from her computer and phone. 

A quick call to the architectural firm where Matt worked establishes the fact that he no longer works there. His mother has also changed residences. No one can give Hannah any answers. Worst of all, she has been receiving strange text messages and believes someone has been entering her house without her permission. When she goes for a jog, someone films her, and then sends the video to her phone.

While this tense-filled situation has no easy explanation, several characters are suspect. Katie, Hannah's best friend, has always been insanely competitive with Hannah. Her next door neighbors, members of the neighborhood watch, are seriously creepy. Her co-worker seems to be on her side but he also seems deceitful.

 Given how shady her close associations are, any one of these characters could be gas lighting Hannah. Matt has always seen supportive but maybe she's seeing a side of Matt she never knew existed?

Torjussen gives her character an intriguing puzzle to decipher. The reader gets a jolt when a surprising twist is thrown in to the mix. A thrilling, yet well-developed novel with a unexpected conclusion. 

Educational Sites

The Fable Cottage
https://thefablecottage.com
I love this site and will try telling parents about this.

Slope and Y intercept

Photo by John Lockwood on Unsplash

One of the best websites (interactive animations) for explaining slope and y-intercept.

Move the slider for slope and the y-intercept to see different version of the line.

https://www.mathsisfun.com/data/straight_line_graph.html

Inkheart by Cornelia Funke

Funke's story is about the power and  magic of books. They bring great joy to a family, Mo, Teresa, and Meggie,  and yet they also bring great calamities. When Mo, also called Silvertongue, reads he accidentally transports fictional characters and objects to his own world. Conversely, Mo also inadvertently draws people or things into the book's world. 

To his sorrow, and without meaning to, Mo has read his wife, Teresa, into the dangerous world of Inkheart. He has accidently sent a hapless fire-eater into his own world and let loose some of Inkheart's most dangerous villains. 

Mo pities the fire-eater, Dustfinger, who longs to return to the pages of Inkheart. Dustfinger hates, the speed, and the crowds of the contemporary world.

Though Dustfinger traitorously works with the arch villian, he later tries to free Mo's family from the clutches of Capricorn and his men. Along with two companions, Farid and Gwin, Dustfinger bravely returns to Capricorn's village. 

Mo has two competing desires. He fervently wants to free his wife, Teresa, from Inkheart's pages but he also wants to keep his daughter, Meggie safe. 

Capricorn wants Meggie to read another villian to life, the nefarious Shadow, so that he can execute prisoners. Fengolio, Inkheart's author, desperately wants to re-write his own fictional work. 

This is a heart-stopping race to the finish for Mo, his family, and his friends.  This novel has lots of action but also beautiful passages and characterization.

Travel

Sadly, Shuri Castle that dates from the Ryukyu era has burned to the ground in Okinawa. The World Heritage site was mostly made of wood.

Photo by Galen Crout on Unsplash

Shuri Castle was probably built during the Gusuku period and used as a palace of the Ryukyu kingdom between 1429 and 1879. 

Throughout history, the castle has been burned and rebuilt many times. Hopefully, the castle will be rebuilt after the most recent fire. 

By 663highland - Own work, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6988105

https://www.japan-guide.com/

Failure isn't always bad

 Photo by Jelleke Vanooteghem on Unsplash


This article, "Why We Should Learn To Embrace Failure" really resonated with me today. Elizabeth Day writes in The Guardian how we should learn to embrace failure. Failure is a starting point. There can be no success without it.

Day, a journalist and fiction writer, runs the podcast, How to Fail.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/jul/15/divorce-miscarriage-jobs-learn-to-embrace-failure-elizabeth-day

Day recommends Tim Harford's Adapt: Why Success Always Starts With Failure. 

Parents may want to look at Jessica Lahey's The Gift of Failure.

While its hard to look at failure as a gift, its ultimately more healthy to look at failure as an opportunity.