New River Academy’s Academics are off to a strong start this quarter. Teachers and student alike came back with a renewed excitement for the transfer of knowledge. With only 5 weeks of school left, I expect nothing less than complete success for all students.
Photo students have no doubt had a literal field day with all the different flowers and trees coming into bloom this spring. It’s always interesting to travel at this time of year because just a few hours drive south or north noticeably changes the development of spring. For example, at our base in West Virginia, a stark brown dominated the landscape with only Yellow Daffodils in bloom. However, after a seven hour drive south we arrived at Ken Cote’s, near Atlanta, to find spring in full bloom. The Bradford Pear trees had lost their white flowers and gone green. Four hours drive north brought us here in the mountains of North Carolina where the Bradford Pears are still in full blossom. Another special tree here in the south is the Eastern Red Bud whose bright magenta flowers display one of nature’s most wonderful contrasts. Not only are the Red Bud’s blossoms beautiful, they are also edible and make a striking addition to spring salads.
On a less colorful note, my math students are having a little field day of their own. Algebra students are learning about sequence and series while reviewing logarithms. Calculus is about to finish a chapter on differential equations, and to start their final chapter on infinite sequence, series, and the representation of the standard functions via power series and Maclaurin series. Power series are one of my personal favorite topics, especially their unexpected appearance in combinatorics. Unfortunately this is out of the scope of our calculus class. Precalulus is finishing up a section on logarithms and starting a unit on discrete mathematics for this last quarter.
A common theme in all of the math classes this quarter and last is logarithms. In my experience, logarithmic functions are some of the most feared and least understood functions of all. I plan to fix this over the next few weeks here a NRA with presentations on the appearance and usefulness of logarithms in everyday life.
