String art is a well-known and popular activity that uses string, a board, and nails to produce artistic images (although there are variations that use different modalities). This activity is beloved because simple counting rules are used to create beautiful images that can both adorn walls and excite young minds. The downside of this highly tactile activity is that it is quite time-consuming and rigid. By contrast, electronic string art offers much more flexibility to set up or change nail locations and counting rules, and the images created from those changes change instantaneously.
Electronic String Art: Rhythmic Mathematics invites readers to use the author's digital resources available on the ESA website to play with the parameters inherent in string art models while offering concise, accessible explanations of the underlying mathematical principles regarding how the images were created and how they change. Readers will have the opportunity to create visually beautiful works of art while learning concepts from geometry, number theory, and modular arithmetic from approximately 200 short-interdependent sections.
Features
Readers are able to drill-down on images in order to understand why they work using short (1 to 2 page) stand-alone sections
Sections are lessons that were created so that they could be digested in a single sitting
These sections are stand-alone in the sense that they need not be read sequentially but can be referred to based on images that the reader finds interesting
An open-ended, inherently flexible teaching resource for elementary, middle, and high school-level mathematics
The most mathematically challenging sections (or portions of a section) are designated MA and may not be accessible to elementary and middle school readers
Will be appreciated by anyone interested in recreational mathematics or mathematical artworks even if the users are not interested in the underlying mathematics
Includes exercises, solutions, and many online digital resources
These QR codes take you to these digital resources. One takes you directly to the web version of the string art model (used as a starting point for teaching the parameters of the model in Section 25.5). The other takes you to the ESA web page with additional links to a variety of resources.
