Minecraft Math

My very awesome colleague Edward starts to be a really splendid MinecraftEDU teacher! He really thinks out of the box and for example one of the first thing the students should build was a hexagon. 

And I thought for myself: 

How on earth will they succeed with that and at the same time learn Pythagorean theorem?

I had not had to worry about.

They wasn't supposed to build the line but finding the correct coordinates. When find the right spot put a sign with the groups name on it. At each hexagon corner each group started to build their own math area.

As you rarely starts at the coordinate (0,0) the first thing you had to do was to find origin. The class did chose themselves to each side (of the hexagon) would have the distance 100 and therefor the height should be approx 87 blocks.

Away you (they) go to find the location...

Out of the box thinking

Coordinates, not lines of blocks! 

Why havn't I thought of that??

One other thing that's truly amazing and also serves as a good example of minecraft tend to be cross curriculum. 

We're not only learning geometry (what's this course is usually is about) but also the coordinate system (the next math course), programming (python) and a foreign language (English (vocabulary))

He made the class to navigate where to execute python online! Copy-paste this code:

It's a formula for the length of the hypotenuse of a right triangle with cathetus x and y, the distance between the two points (x_1,y_1) and (x_2,y_2).

Also, he and the class, also found this awesome tool Mineconics where you can draw geometry figures with an online tool and later build the same inside Minecraft, like lines, rectangles and circles.