TERRE HAUTE —
At 305 years young, the spirit of Benjamin Franklin is still alive and flipping.
“Actually, I didn’t know that he invented [swimming] flippers. So that was kind of interesting,” Indiana State University junior Kelsie Noble laughed inside the Terre Haute Children’s Museum on Sunday afternoon.
The museum played host to Ben Franklin’s Birthday Bash in commemoration of the Founding Father’s Jan. 17, 1706, birthday. ISU students partnered with the museum to fill all three of the facility’s levels with educational stations explaining Franklin’s wide range of roles in science and math. His numerous inventions of note include, yes, flippers, students learned.
About 200 visitors had passed through the museum by the midpoint of the 1 to 3 p.m. event.
Patty Butwin, chairwoman of the ISU Center for Mathematics education advisory board, said the school’s “Go Figure” program was supplying volunteers to work with the children.
“We’re using Ben Franklin because he touches on so many different areas,” she said.
The “Go Figure” program is part of the university’s educational outreach to area K-12 students, with about 20 college students from a variety of majors designing and implementing enrichment lessons.
“It takes a village to make this happen,” Butwin said as students gathered about Honey Creek Middle School math teacher Bob Fischer, who had dressed as Franklin, to explain the mathematics involved in his famous “magic square.” The square is a math game where all the numbers add up equally regardless of their direction.
“He got bored just being the secretary,” Butwin said, explaining that Franklin doodled up the math game while serving as secretary of the Pennsylvania Colonial Assembly. “What this is all about here is how math and science touch every aspect of our lives.”
Noble, a business management major and Networks Scholar, was helping to organize that group’s “Money Bus” stationed outside the museum’s third-floor conference room. A number of station’s filled the hall, explaining the role of banking accounts, checking services and other financial principles associated with the man who once wrote, “A penny saved is a penny earned.”
The ISU Networks’ Money Bus is part of the university’s financial literacy outreach to school children, Noble said.
Katelynn Moats, a junior elementary education major with a middle school math endorsement and five minors, said the Franklin program serves as good promotion for the “Go Figure” team.
“It’s a great kickoff to our ‘Go Figure’ coming up in the spring,” she said of the Feb. 24 launch.
ISU students will host a program at the museum titled “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing and More” beginning that date. Subsequent programs at the museum include “Math on the Farm” beginning March 3 and “The Luck of the Irish” on March 17. The Terre Haute Rex baseball team will participate in “Ballpark Math” on March 31.
The Money Bus was the big draw of the day. Hundreds of visitors passed through the exhibits, playing games and working science experiments in memory of Franklin.
The program’s capstone featured Fischer as Franklin reading from the book “The Magic Square” to the children, followed by a cupcake party in the old inventor’s honor.
Brian Boyce can be reached at 812-231-4253 or brian.boyce@tribstar.com.
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Event teaches math, science 305 years after Ben Franklin's birth
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