1/ Tweeting live to give a peek into the 'Connecting the Dots' course from @GenWise_ A math assignment 'Journey to Lilliput' is being discussed. The 1st question is easy- it asks what is that single number factor which can be used to scale Gulliver's world down to Lilliput... 
2/ Most children answer this correctly, but some use a factor of 3 to convert sq.ft to sq. m instead of using 3 x 3
3/ A discussion is happening on how wide national highways in India are...building on width of a single lane. A cute but perceptive discussion that ' We don't think Lilliput would have 6 lane highways'...so making a comparison to our smaller roads done
4/ Some discussion happens now on how tall a single storey is...
5/ There are interesting answers to how large the palace should be...
6/ One student proposes a 5ft x 5 ft palace... a discussion ensues on how large a palace should be...
7/ The teacher says any particular sizes are ok for an individual thing but stresses that the sizes need to be consistent with other elements in that world....The number of people in the Lilliputian city is now discussed
8/ Most students agree that the city is too congested for Lilliputians comparing to population densities in our world. I think through this assignment & this discussion, students have started realizing that scaling from 'one world' to 'another' is not so simple
9/ Different kinds of 'non-proportional' variation are discussed
10/ Different questions are posed... including how does surface area with volume?
11/ A discussion now on how much food Gulliver will need...a student points out that 12^3 = 1728 and not 1724 and the teacher says "Yes, Jonathan Swift probably made a mistake.... Most students invoke food needed per volume which makes sense, gives a multiplier of 1728 but now...
12/ The teacher invokes JBS Haldane- food supply should be proportional to your surface area and not your weight! Because it is about heat/ energy loss.... a different paradigm emerges
13/ One student rightly points out that Lilliputians were feeding Gulliver the equivalent of 36 meals a day! because they did not understand the right scaling for food needs.. follow the surface area NOT volume! The teacher shows how Lilliputians consequently eat 12 times we do
13/ Lilliputians would need to eat all the time and would not have the time to attend GenWise classes 😂 quips the teacher.. she asks now if such beings as 'Lilliputs' can exist? Dots between Math-scaling and Life/ Biology starting to connect...
13/ Now the teacher moves to Brobdignag and the giants....& what dimensions of legs are needed to support the giant's weight? The cross-sectional area of the supporting bones is crucial. Enlarging things proprtionately is just not working!!
14/ The class is now coming to an end... the teacher show the students a spreadsheet...where different relationships can be visualized....these tools should help students to explore such relationships better
15/ As the cube grows bigger... SA/ Volume ratio falls down. So smaller animals have larger surface area compared to a larger animal... that is why when a beetle jumps into water, a lot of water collects on it & so it might drown because of the weight!
16/ ....Beetles in polar regions would die because they would lose too much heat...that is why you find larger animals in polar regions...
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