Welcome to the MSERC Blog

Here we will report on our activities and present videos, news items, and fun problems that can be used in the classroom.

Girls as Good at Math as Boys : Discovery News : Discovery Channel

Girls as Good at Math as Boys : Discovery News : Discovery Channel

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Darwin series: Baboons benefit from strong social networks, expert says

full story @ www.udel.edu Darwin series: Baboons benefit from strong social networks, expert says 2:07 p.m., May 6, 2009—-Monkey communication expert Robert Seyfarth began his lecture on May 5, the kick-off of the University of Delaware’s Year of Darwin celebration, with a true story, documented in 1961, about a female baboon that herded goats in an African village. The baboon knew all of the relationships between the goats so well that at night she would carry a bleating kid from one barn directly to its mother in another barn. “For all the centuries we’ve bred dogs, no dog has exhibited this knowledge of kids and mothers,” said Seyfarth, who is a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “The question is where does this mind come from?” Seyfarth transported an audience of about 200 people into the fascinating world of the baboons of Botswana’s Okavanga Delta, which he and Dorothy Cheney, his research partner, fellow Penn professor, and spouse, studied from 1992 to 2008.

Today’s Problem: Fish and Chips Takeaway

Creative Commons License: Attribute http://www.flickr.com/people/f10n4/

Bob’s Fishery restaurant is now serving a healthier version of its famous fish and chips.

Here is the nutritional info for each

Category	Original Version	Healthier Version
Calories	1575	Two-thirds less
Fat	90 grams	Four-fifths less
Sodium	1850 milligrams	40% less
Carbohydrates	137.5 grams	60% less

What are the numerical values of each of the nutrients in the healthier version?

Sea Shells Used To Clean Up Heavy Metals

full story @ www.msnbc.msn.com Technique could save millions of lives in coastal cities in developing world By Michael Reilly On the banks of the Saigon River in Vietnam, researchers have just completed tests on a new way to combat water pollution that could save millions of lives in coastal cities throughout the developing world. In factories on the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City, Stephan Kohler of the Graz University of Technology in Austria and a team of researchers have cleansed water tainted with toxic metals like cadmium, zinc, lead and iron. And they’ve done it using nothing but one of the cheapest, most abundant material around: seashells. Kohler’s team has found that pouring metal and acid-laden water over a bed of crushed clam or mussel shells provides an easy fix. The shells are made of aragonite, a form of calcium carbonate (CACO3) that readily swaps out its calcium atoms in favor of heavy metals, locking them into a solid form. The shells are naturally basic, too — when dissolved they have a pH of 8.3.

Today’s Problem: Mystery Set

A set of five numbers have the following properties:

The mode of the set is 0 and 4.
The median of the set is 4.
The mean of the set is 4.

What are the five numbers in the set?