Graspable Math

Reading Jo Morgan’s Gems post led me to the very happy discovery of Graspable Math. Graspable Math offers a highly innovative interface for mathematical notation. You can read the Graspable Math story here.

You can learn a great deal about Graspable Math simply by experimenting, selecting Explore Algebra takes you to the interface which is intuitive; you can also find plenty of help and tutorials on the Learn section of the site, note the Gesture Library as well as the video tutorial collection.  There is a YouTube channel here.

Graspable Math is very easy to use, I decided I would solve an equation and wanted to show all the steps. I have used the method of selecting and holding the = sign to start as you can see illustrated in the video above; I was then able to enter an operation to apply to both sides of the equation.

equation to solve

equation to solve 2

SettingsAn alternative to the above is to use the settings menu; choose Dragging to apply the inverse operation to both sides.

We can also illustrate a solution graphically by inserting a graph to open a GeoGebra window.
equation & graph

Each expression has a circle at the end – simply drag that to the GeoGebra window. You will sometimes see more than one circle at the end of an expression, select to separate expressions hence showing all steps clearly.

The scrubbing feature is very useful, drag up or down on a number to change its value; the change will propagate through the rest of the working.

Cheat Sheet
Graspable Maths have provided a ‘cheat sheet‘ providing a handy summary of how to use the interface.

I can see this becoming a regular part of lessons, a go-to resource.

 

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