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Dear Friends of Math Cats,

Greetings after a very long silence!

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     WHAT'S NEW AT MATH CATS
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* MATH PALS
http://www.mathcats.com/explore/mathpals.html

What's a math pal? It's a pen pal who trades ideas about math! Teachers, visit this page to launch your class on this new adventure.

* SEPTEMBER 2003 WRITING CONTEST: CREATE A GAME
http://www.mathcats.com/contest.html

Create a game using only rubber bands, paper clips, and a coin, then tell us about it - including your creative scoring system. Also read the winning entries from the past three writing contests.

* BAG OF MICE
http://www.mathcats.com/explore/bag-o/mice.html

As mice tumble from a hole in a bag held by a hungry cat, they bounce off rows of cat paws and pile up in a curved mousetrap below. It's a fun peek at statistics: we never know where a particular mouse will land, but each new bagful of tumbling mice falls into columns roughly matching the normal (bell-shaped) distribution curve.

* VIRTUAL MOBILE
http://www.mathcats.com/explore/virtual/mobile.html

Add beams, adjust their length and position, change the size and color of the weights at their ends, and watch this virtual mobile react to the motions of your mouse or to random morphings.

* WARP THE WORLD
http://www.mathcats.com/explore/warp/world.html

Hmm... Earth shaped like a square? a bowl? a fish? You can warp the world here!

* LINKING CIRCLES
http://www.mathcats.com/microworlds/linkingcircles_overview.html

Control the size, thickness, and overlap of three interlocking circles.

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     SITE SPOTLIGHT
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TIME TRAVELER
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/einstein/hotsciencetwin/twin1.html

This applet lets us see the ages of two humans of great longevity by the time Jane rejoins Tom after a round trip to another star. It's a fun way to explore Einstein's theory, and the "What's going on here?" page is geared for kids. An extra math challenge asks students to adjust the ages, the rocket's speed, and the choice of star so that Tom and Jane are almost the same age when Jane returns from her trip.

FAMOUS CURVES INDEX
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Curves/Curves.html

If you can get past the dry interface of this site, there are many discoveries to be made. Enjoy interactive explorations with the mathematical curves, whether or not you read the explanations. Learn about the mathematicians behind the math. (The page on distribution curves led me to the life of Abraham de Moivre, who even used math to predict the date of his death. Noticing he was sleeping 15 minutes longer each night - an arithmetic progression - he figured he would die on the day when he slept 24 hours... and he was right!)

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     MATH CATS IS HONORED
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Math Cats has now been selected *three times* by the Eisenhower National Clearinghouse as an ENC Digital Dozen site, most recently in June 2003. Visit the Math Cats awards page to read about this and other honors.

http://www.mathcats.com/awards.html

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If you like the Math Cats site and Math Cats News, I hope you will help spread the word. Please forward this Math Cats News to others! If you have received this Math Cats News as a forwarded e-mail and would like to subscribe, you can sign up in the "4 older cats" area of Math Cats:

http://www.mathcats.com/grownupcats.html

Thanks,

Wendy Petti
the one human at Math Cats
(with more and more helpful cyberfriends!)
mathcats.com
wpetti@mathcats.com