Captain Astounding’s Nightclub
This is something a bit different... The uses of squares, cubes and higher powers are explained in the setting of Captain Astounding’s Nightclub. How much paint do they need to decorate a pattern on the floor? What dimensions does a carton of Jungle Juice need to double its contents? How much interest do they get on their surplus money in their savings account?
It explains the concepts of indices very well, in a tone that younger students would enjoy. And, if you can bring yourself not to read the multitude of footnotes, it’s quite well suited to older students and adults. It’s full of very short exercises, complete with upside down answers. A nice touch is the fact they include common wrong answers with an explanation of where you’ve gone wrong.
The sections of text are colour coded, which does allow the reader to decide how in depth they want the maths to go.
It starts with the basics of squares and moves a reasonable pace onto higher powers and roots and ends with logarithms. I know that some of my keen students would devour this in a weekend and come back into class on Monday with questions and an interest in knowing more.
This is definitely a ‘reading’ book rather than a teaching tool and would be well placed in a school library, if it can withstand the wear and tear - I found the binding fairly poor and on its second opening pages began to fall out.
Karen Hancock - Assistant Head of Maths, Howard of Effingham School
ISBN 1 904412 00 9
£11.99
Published by Dan Welchman Productions
07905950308 (24hr voicemail service)
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