Did you know...

about number 6174?

HAVE YOU HEARD SOMETHING ABOUT IT?

TAKE A PENCIL AND A PIECE OF PAPER…

1. CHOOSE A FOUR DIFFERENT DIGITS NUMBER

(FOR EXAMPLE 2019)

2. CREATE THE BIGGEST AND THE SMALLEST NUMBER WITH IT

(IN OUR EXAMPLE THE BIGGEST IS 9210 AND THE SMALLEST IS 0129 (IF THE NUMBER HAVE LESS THAN FOUR DIGITS COMPLETE WITH ZEROS)

3.- SUBSTRACT BOTH NUMBERS

9210-0129=9081

4.- REPEAT STEPS 1, 2 AND 3 WITH THE NEW NUMBER:

9081:

BIGGEST: 9810

SMALLEST: 0189

DIFFERENCE:

9810-0189=9621.

5.- REPEAT THIS PROCESS SEVERAL TIMES:

9621:

BIGGEST: 9621

SMALLEST: 1269

DIFFERENCE:

9621-1269=8352

AGAIN:

8352:

BIGGEST: 8532

SMALLEST: 2358

DIFFERENCE:

8532-2358= 6174

AND AGAIN:

6174:

BIGGEST: 7641

SMALLEST: 1467

DIFFERENCE:

7641-1467= 6174

SORRY?? 6174??

YOU CAN´T ESCAPE FROM IT…

You must obtain 6174. You can begin in any four-digit number, in less than 8 steps 6174 appears.

Well, this process of subtract the biggest and the smallest number than you can form with a number given is called “KAPREKAR PROCESS” and 6174 is a constant of this process for four digits number.

Did you know...

about Jesse Owens?

Black History: Jesse Owens Proved Hitler Wrong

Under the coaching of Larry Snyder, Owens won a record eight individual NCAA championships, four each in 1935 and 1936. Though Owens enjoyed athletic success, he still experienced segregation. He had to live off campus with other African-American athletes. When he travelled with the team, Owens was restricted to ordering carry-out or eating at “blacks-only” restaurants. Similarly, he had to stay at “blacks-only” hotels. Owens did not receive a scholarship for his efforts, so he continued to work part-time jobs to pay for school.

Owens decided to enter the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany. At this point, Hitler had complete control of the country. He believed that Aryan people (Northern European white people) were the superior race and he wanted to use the Games to prove this to the world.

Owens stopped Hitler and his Aryan athletes in their tracks as he won four gold medals in a single Olympics (in the 100m, 200m, long jump and 4x100m relay), which made him first American track and field athlete to do so. After the games, President Roosevelt refused to acknowledge Owens’ achievements via phone call or telegram or by extending an invite to the White House.

Jesse Owens showed the world that Hitler’s view that the Aryan race was the superior one was completely wrong and based only on racism. He showed that black people are just as talented (often more so in the sprints) as white people. Even though he faced segregation and discrimination, Owens kept running (and jumping) because he loved it and he knew he was good at it. He paved the way for other black athletes to follow in his footsteps. He will forever be remembered in Olympic history.

Santi Gómez

Did you know...

about Saint Valentine?

Valentine’s Day occurs every February 14.

All around the world, candy, flowers and gifts are exchanged between loved ones, all in the name of St. Valentine.

But the origins…

It has origins in the Roman festival of Lupercalia, held in mid-February. The festival, which celebrated the coming of spring, included fertility rites and the pairing off of women with men by lottery.

So… What happened with LUPERCALIA?

As it was “un-Christian”–at the end of the 5th century, Pope Gelasius declared February 14 St. Valentine’s Day. Years later, the day was definitively associated with love.

During the Middle Ages, people believed that February 14 was the beginning of BIRDS’ MATING SEASON, which added to the idea that the middle of Valentine’s Day should be a day for romance.

Contribution to the English poet Chaucer to Saint Valentine…

Geoffrey Chaucer was the first to record St. Valentine’s Day as a day of romantic celebration in his 1375 poem “Parliament of Foules”

Who Was the Real St. Valentine?

The Catholic Church recognizes at least three different saints named Valentine or Valentius, all of them were martyred.

THEORY 1:

He was a priest who served during the third century in Rome. Emperor Claudius II decided that single men made better soldiers than those with wives and families, but Valentine performed marriages for young lovers in secret.

THEORY 2:

It refers to Saint Valentine of Terci, a bishop.

THEORY 3:

A Valentine who had been killed helping Christians escape from Roman prisons. An imprisoned Valentine who actually sent the first “valentine” greeting himself after falling in love with a young girl who visited him.

He signed the letter with “From your Valentine”, an expression in use today.

Who is Cupid?

Cupid is often portrayed on Valentine’s Day cards as a naked cherub launching arrows of love at unsuspecting lovers. But the Roman God Cupid has his roots in Greek mythology as the Greek god of love, Eros.

Did you know that St. Valentine is also the patron saint of bees?

At first, this seems rather strange. But when we consider that honey has been a longtime aphrodisiac, it begins to make a little more sense. Honey is representative of love as well as bees, symbols of pollination (or procreation). Long time ago, newlyweds would be given a bottle of mead, which is an alcohol originally brewed from honey. This is why we have the term, “honeymoon” for those who have been just married.

Can we celebrate Valentine’s Day several times a year?

And the answer is YES! St. Valentine of Viterbo on NOVEMBER 3. St. Valentine of Raetia on JANUARY 7. Women might choose to honor the only female St. Valentine (Valentina), on JULY 25.

Rosa Cañadas

Did you know...

which is the relationship between computers and snacks?

At first sight, nothing to do, but it is a tricky question, let me ask you the same in another way:

Why do the computers have “chips”? Why are “chips” snacks? Are those chips the same?

Of course not, nobody could imagine a computer using fried potatoes to work and indeed this doesn´t happen.

Ok, let´s begin:

Cambridge dictionary:

Chip: [ C usually plural ] US(US also potato chip); (UK (potato) crisp)

a very thin, often round piece of fried potato, sometimes with a flavour added, sold especially in plastic bags:

Did you know...

about calculator?

HISTORY OF CALCULATORS

ORIGIN: THE ABACUS

The abacus, also called a counting frame, is a calculating tool that was in use in the ancient Near East, Europe, China, and Russia, centuries before the adoption of the written Hindu–Arabic numeral system. The exact origin of the abacus is still unknown, but it is thought that the first abacus appeared in Mesopotamia around 2700 BC.

1622: SLIDE RULES

The slide rule, also known colloquially in the United States as a slipstick, is a mechanical analog computer. As graphical analog calculators, slide rules are closely related to nomograms, but the former are used for general calculations, whereas the latter are used for application-specific computations.

The slide rule is used primarily for multiplication and division, and also for functions such as exponents, roots, logarithms, and trigonometry, but typically not for addition or subtraction.

The Reverend William Oughtred and others developed the slide rule in the 17th century based on the emerging work on logarithms by John Napier. Before the advent of the electronic calculator, it was the most commonly used calculation tool in science and engineering.

1642: PASCAL’S CALCULATOR

Pascal's calculator (also known as the arithmetic machine or Pascaline) is a mechanical calculator invented by Blaise Pascal in the early 17th century. Pascal was led to develop a calculator by the laborious arithmetical calculations required by his father's work as the supervisor of taxes in Rouen. He designed the machine to add and subtract two numbers directly and to perform multiplication and division through repeated addition or subtraction.

1672: STEP RECKONER

The step reckoner (or stepped reckoner) was a digital mechanical calculator invented by the German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz around 1672 and completed in 1694. The name comes from the translation of the German term for its operating mechanism, Staffelwalze, meaning 'stepped drum'. It was the first calculator that could perform all four arithmetic operations.

Its intricate precision gearwork, however, was somewhat beyond the fabrication technology of the time; mechanical problems, in addition to a design flaw in the carry mechanism, prevented the machines from working reliably.

1873: ODHNER ARITHMOMETER

The Odhner Arithmometer was a very successful pinwheel calculator invented in Russia in 1873 by W. T. Odhner, a Swedish immigrant. Its industrial production officially started in 1890 in Odhner's Saint Petersburg workshop. Even though the machine was very popular, the production only lasted thirty years until the factory was nationalised and closed down during the Russian revolution of 1917.

From 1892 to the middle of the 20th century, independent companies were set up all over the world to manufacture Odhner's clones and, by the 1960s, with millions sold, it became one of the most successful type of mechanical calculator ever designed.

1887: COPTOMETER

The comptometer was the first commercially successful key-driven mechanical calculator, patented in the United States by Dorr E. Felt in 1887.

Although the comptometer was primarily an adding machine, it could also do subtractions, multiplication and division. Its keyboard consisted of eight or more columns of nine keys each. Special comptometers with varying key arrays were produced for a variety of special purposes, including calculating currency exchanges, times and Imperial weights. The name comptometer was formerly in wide use as a generic name for this class of calculating machine.

1893: THE MILLIONAIRE

The Millionaire was the first commercially successful mechanical calculator that could perform a direct multiplication. It was in production from 1893 to 1935 with a total of about five thousand machines manufactured.[1][2]

It was commercialized as "The Millionaire" in English speaking countries, "La Millionnaire" in French and "Millionär" in German speaking countries.

1948: CURTA

Curta was a mechanical calculator introduced in 1948. It was small and had a crank to be operated. It had a brightly compact design, a small cylinder that fit in the palm of the hand. It could be used to perform operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and, with more difficulty, square roots and other operations. Curta's design was a variant of the Gottfried Leibniz arithmometer, accumulating values on cogwheels, which were added or complemented by a step drum mechanism (Stepped Reckoner).

1970s: PROGRAMMABLE CALCULATORS

The HP-65 is the first magnetic card-programmable handheld calculator. Introduced by Hewlett-Packard in 1974, it featured nine storage registers and room for 100 keystroke instructions. It also included a magnetic card reader/writer to save and load programs.

Bill Hewlett's design requirement was that the calculator should fit in his shirt pocket. That is one reason for the tapered depth of the calculator. The magnetic program cards are fed in at the thick end of the calculator under the LED display. The documentation for the programs in the calculator is very complete, including algorithms for hundreds of applications, including the solutions of differential equations, stock price estimation, statistics, and so forth.

Dpto. de Matemáticas

Did you know...

about the History of sports?

Most sports of today only developed in their current form in the 19th and 20th century, though many take their origins from more primitive sports and pastimes of ancient times.

What is the first sport ever played?

Although it is impossible to know for sure, it is usually considered that wrestling and boxing were the first sports every played. Competitions using the simple mode of human transport, running, would also have been among the first sports played.

Competitions involving hitting, kicking, throwing a ball like object, as well as sports related to hunting and throwing would also be expected to have be played in early times.

There are many sports that have developed as competitions from means of early transportation, such as horse riding and canoeing, and from military activities such as archery.

At the first recorded ancient Olympic Games in 760 BC, there was only one event, a footrace. Later Games included other events such as wrestling, boxing, equestrian, discus, javelin, and jumping. From around the same time, the only sport mentioned in the Bible is said to be wrestling.

Overview of Modern Sporting History

• Baseball, from its origins in 1840s in northeastern United States to the institution of the National, and later American Leagues, making up what is today known as Major League Baseball

• American Football, which existed in various forms mostly across the college ranks in the 1800s before Walter Camp, at Yale University, began to help establish rules that made the game appear much as it does today. Football's evolution primarily took place in college, as college football was far more popular than its professional counterpart until the late 1950's when the National Football League became the dominant force in American football.

• Motor Racing, whose origin is difficult to trace. Racing motorized vehicles actually began more with motorized bicycles or tricycles than cars, though not by many years. Car racing began to emerge at the very end of the 19th century, leading into the development of tracks built for car racing in the first decade of the 1900s, first in Britain in 1907, then later in the U.S., most famously with the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1909. There are an extremely wide variety of motor racing, between the more famous Formula One and NASCAR to rally cars, touring cars and sports cars.

• Association Football, or Soccer, widely considered the world's most popular sport, traces it modern roots back to the standardization of the rules of the sport in England in the mid-1800s, leading to the creation of the Football Association in London in 1863. The current governing body in international soccer is the Federation Internationale de Football Association, or FIFA, which was formed in 1904 although the rest of Europe did not take up the game till the mid 1920s.

Santi Gómez

ELEMENTS

Acrosport is an acrobatic-choreographic sport that integrates three main elements:

1. Buildings: strength, flexibility and balance are needed to make buildings. a. Figures: each partner has a part of their body leaned on the floor. b. Pyramids: this structure always includes at least two levels.

2. Acrobatics: they are used as a transition from one building to another. They include gymnastic elements such as turns, somersaults, handstands, cartwheel, jumps, …

3. Music: it is a basic element for the performance. It enhances the choreography.

BUILDING PYRAMIDS:

Students with back problems should avoid overloading it, so they will be normally top performers, or in case of being base performers, they will never have anyone climb his back.

• Always work without shoes, in socks.

• Always use helpers to perform pyramids.

• Before we built a pyramid we should make sure the mats are placed together.

• There shouldn’t be near the pyramid any object or person that could cause any harm.

There are three phases:

1. CONSTRUCTION: We must begin from the centre to the sides. This type of construction provides us fluency and security. Communication among partners is very important. Tops must climb carefully. They must try to avoid pushes that could unbalance the bases.

2. STABILIZATION: once the team has built the pyramid it should keep the structure during three seconds. It depends on: correct distribution and position control.

3. ENDING: it must always be done in the construction opposite order, from the sides to the centre. Top must always get off the pyramid through de front side, never through the back side.

Santi Gómez

Did you know...

how long have schools had sports teams?

Have You Ever Wondered...

How long have schools had sports teams?

How do school sports impact students?

What is Title IX?

Do you practice your golf swing after school? Maybe you meet your friends for soccer practice. You might work on cheerleading or dance routines. Or perhaps you’d rather watch sports than take part in them. Either way, sports are a huge part of schools today.

But has it always been that way? Try to imagine a world where schools don’t have sports teams. You may find it difficult to do so! Today, over half of all American high school students play a school sport. But today’s school sports look very different than they did a few hundred years ago.

Did you know kids haven’t always gone to school? It’s true! For a long time, only rich families sent their children to school. Often, these children went to boarding schools away from home. There, many kids took part in sports. They learned fencing, lacrosse, and some types of dance. Sometimes they played against other schools, but not always. Often, students at the same school competed with each other instead.

In the United States, Massachusetts became the first state to send all kids to school in 1852. Other states slowly got on board with compulsory education. The last state to do so was Mississippi in 1917. Almost immediately, sports became part of public schools.

Early public schools wanted to give students a well-rounded education. They thought sports would help kids build character. They also wanted to give all students more opportunities to learn and grow. Many schools saw sports as one such opportunity.

Have you ever watched two school sports teams play against each other? If so, you know these events can be very exciting! However, early school sports didn’t hold many competitions between schools. That didn’t become common until 1903. That year, New York City’s Public School Athletic League for Boys was created. This was the start of formal competitions between students of different schools.

That’s when school sports really began to blossom. Soon, kids were rushing to join baseball, basketball, and track and field teams. But there was still one problem. Not all students had the same opportunities to play. Girls and students with disabilities were often left out. Segregation and racism meant students of color were often left out as well.

Slowly, this started to change. Segregation became illegal in the mid-20th Century. That led to more opportunities for student athletes of color. In 1972, Title IX stopped schools from discriminating against students on the basis of gender. Because of Title IX, schools had to offer girls the same opportunities they gave to boys. The 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act also brought change. It forced schools to give students with disabilities equal access to sports.

As of 2013, 7.7 million American students took part in school sports. Many people question how sports impact kids academically. Studies have shown that student athletes are more likely to go to college. They also tend to score well on standardized tests and have positive relations with school staff.

Are school sports for everyone? Not necessarily. Plenty of kids would rather spend their time doing other activities after school. But for those who do take part, school sports have many benefits. And of course, anyone can enjoy watching a competition between two schools. School sports are sure to remain a popular pastime for years to come.

María Rosa Ortega Pérez