Using math to investigate the world

Math isn't every student's favorite subject, but when students are shown how math can be used beyond the classroom, they are open to a world of new possibilities.

This is what the professors at the University of Central Arkansas did for the local high school students who participated in the first Math and Science Investigator program.

"With high school students and some college students, we teach them all the math we can and they say, "Who cares?" and wonder what they'll ever do with it, but this is a program that actually shows how math affects our everyday life," Dr. Danny Arrigo, UCA math professor, said Friday.

According to Dr. Ramesh Garimella, chair of the UCA math department, 29 local kids from private, public and home schools came together last week to explore and discover.

The students were taught five different lessons over the week-long program, from studying how math is used in musical acoustics to studying the relationship between wave speed and water depth to studying the use of math in modern medicine.

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"Within each one of these five subjects is an underlying theory of math and that kind of math is really beyond the reach of some of the kids, but what we want them to truly understand is its impact in society," Arrigo said. "When they see that math is useful, then it starts to open up their imaginations and the kids will start to wonder what else they can predict using mathematics."

Along with Dr. Uma Garimella, professor of biology, Arrigo worked to teach the students about diffusion in familiar situations and how science and math can rely heavily on one another.

"The kids would start an experiment and work through the math to predict a model of what's going to happen and once they came to my side of the program and we actually did the experiment to see how well the prediction fit, the fit was almost nearly perfect," Uma Garimella said.

She said seeing how the two separate studies relate helped the students better understand the lesson. She said it will help her in future classes, as well.

"This program was not only good for the kids, but also good for the faculty," Uma Garimella said. "I learned new ways of teaching biology and I want some of the professors I've worked with to come to my classroom in the fall to help me better explain the connections."

Stephanie Almand, a sophomore from Little Rock, said what she learned about muscular physics from Uma Garimella and Dr. William Slaton of the physics department was her favorite part of the program.

"I liked working with the levers and learning about all things with the muscles," Almand said. "The body really fascinates me and I want to study that when I get to college."

The students not only participated in the five math- and science-related programs, they also took part in fun activities during lunch breaks, including touring a model of a giant whale.

Sarah Martin, who will be a sophomore at Conway Christian High School in the fall, said she liked being able to look at various specimens through a scanning electron microscope, but Imani Hogan and Maiah Holbrook, both rising sophomores at Conway High School East, said they liked looking at the bigger picture.

"I liked when we went to the planetarium and learned about different stars because we got to see what the stars looked like from Conway and that was cool," Holbrook said.

Ramesh Garimella said he hopes the students not only enjoy what they are learning on the UCA campus, but also take that knowledge and apply it in their own schools and perhaps in their futures.

"We want to continue the relationships the kids have formed with the UCA professors and we hope that the kids will continue to contact the professors if they need help on a science project or a math project," he said. "Then we hope to bring them back to campus to see how things are going in their classes and see how the program has affected them."

Although most of the students paid a $75 fee for the program, some students received financial assistance, based on teachers' recommendations. Ramesh Garimella said the rest of the program was developed using a $10,000 grant from the Arkansas Science and Technology Authority and a $2,400 seed grant from the UCA Foundation.

"The grant from ASTA will enable the UCA mathematics department to bring its innovative summer enrichment program to a much larger and more diverse student population in central Arkansas," Dr. Stephen Seidman, dean of the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, said in a press release. "The program is designed to introduce students in the ninth- through 11th-grade to applications of mathematics to the sciences. It is an integral part of the emphasis on mathematics and science education in the CNSM."

(Staff writer Jessica Bauer can be reached by e-mail at jessica.bauer@thecabin.net or by phone at 505-1236. To comment on this and other stories in the Log Cabin, log on to www.thecabin.net. Send us your news at www.thecabin.net/submit)