Numbers at the Airport
Four short lessons on the numbers a family meets on a trip by air: adding minutes on a departure board, why each end of a runway wears a different number, how a seat map is a grid, and why the shortest route between two cities bends toward the pole.
For grown-ups, from what GeometryForge teaches children at Spark & Anvil.
- Lesson 1The departure board
- Lesson 2The number on the runway
- Lesson 3The seat map is a grid
- Lesson 4Why the route bends north
The kitchen-table departure board
You'll need: Paper ruled into a table, a pen, a clock with hands or a phone clock face.
- Make up five flights: a place, a departure time and how many minutes each one takes.
- Each player works out one landing time in their head and writes it in. A time like 11:75 is the trap: say why no clock shows it.
- Swap boards and check each other’s times on the clock face, moving the minute hand all the way round.
- Now give one flight a time zone two hours behind and ask: what does the arrivals clock say, and how long were we really flying?
A little history, and what nobody knows
The painted number
A runway is numbered by its magnetic heading, rounded to the nearest ten degrees with the last zero dropped. Magnetic north drifts, so airports sometimes repaint a runway with new numbers.
When a given runway will next need new numbers cannot be known far ahead.
Source: Runway (Wikipedia)
The same idea at every age
- Ages 3–5How Many Tiles?
- Ages 6–8Seat 14C and 1 more
- Ages 9–14Runway Numbers and 2 more
- Ages 15–18The Rule of Sixty and 3 more
Your child will meet this idea again at every age. The tools and courses here are the part for you.