Walkthrough Entry Enter the exhibition by passing underneath a parabolic archway spanning two base units. We use place values like ones, tens, and hundreds to represent numbers. The Aztecs of Mexico used a combination of symbols and counted in base 20. The unit looks like a finger, the twenty unit looks like a flag, and the 400 unit looks like a feather.
Young visitors can learn to count their age or other numbers using the Aztec symbols.
Cool Curves Planets orbit the sun in an oval shape called an ellipse. Water from a fountain forms an arch called a parabola. This exhibit is a computer game that allows visitors to identify common shapes and curves, like the ellipse and parabola, that appear in nature. By using a dog model made of 13 cubes, young visitors can experiment with length, width and height of the dog model by adding additional cubes. It would actually take 104 cubes to Double the Doggie size.