Evening star., 1963-12-22
SEEING THE ABSTRACT
Visual Aids Stir Math Students
By BRIAN KELLY
Star Staff Writer

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With surplus glass, an occa-
Eional shirt cardboard and pipe
cleaners for materials, a crea-
tive young Arlington mathe-
mates teacher has assembled
90 sets Of visual aids which his
colleagues in 10 county schools
are now using to explain their
abstract subject matter.
As part Of a research project,
Donald w. Slower, 81, produced
the aids in one summers work,
invented one or two devices Of
his own and developed q new
loop" method for blackboard
demonstrations Of an algebra
problem without benefit of
numerical figures.
The innovator Of these items
and techniques Is q young man
who finds mathematics heady
stuff. There's beauty in 1t;
there's an aesthetic element In
it." he said the other day with
the excitement his students at
Wakefield High School have
found hard to resist.
Results Of Labor
AS a result Of his work dur
ing the summer months, the
visitor to any Of Arlington's 10
junior and senior high schools
may find:
/. Members Of a math class
sitting in the dark and viewing
slide projections of geometric
figures through paper and Gel
lophane SD" glasses that
make the shapes pop out" in
three dimensions. ,
For this project, Mr.. Stover ,
devised a shortcut for dupli- ;
eating the elaborate SD" ef- /
fectS Hollywood briefly expert !
mented with a few years ago.
2. In another classroom, a
teacher demonstrating poly
hedra, or geometric solids, by
assembling cubes, squares and
other interesting shapes from a
kit of colored card board pieces
some of them cut from the
shirt backings supplied by Mr..
Stover's laundry.
8. Elsewhere still, teachers
swaiing three dimensional
models demonstrating geome-
try theorums; binominal cubes; '
sine-cosine boards and other
handy items from Mr.. Stover's Z
basement workshop. /
Straws Play a Roll
The geometry models are =
constructed from Straws con- :
nected by the pipe cleaners, '
while the binomial cubes, a 9
concrete representation Of an
abstract algebraic formula, :
consists of surplus glass from
the Arlington School property
yards.
One Of several incentive re-
search programs approved by
the Arlington School Board
early this year. Mr.. Stover's
project began last May with a
survey of n county secondary
math teachers on suggestions
for visual aids that would dem
onstrate their complex subject.
Trimming down a list Of 100
requests to. 40 priority projects,
Mr.. Stover set to work In a ,
small workshop in his home at {
1912 South Ninth street. Ar 4,
lington, and the shops at Wake !
field, where he has taught for {
four years.
Then one day in August he
carried five carloads Of items
to a pre-school briefing for
teachers, where the visual aids {
were distributed to his COL
leagues. Mr.. Slower was paid {
$l,O33, or one-sixth of his an ]
nual salary. for 33 days Of work {
on the project. {
Costs County Little ,
Many of the devices were du-
plicates of commercial products
available to educators. but the .
young teachers handiwork cost ,
the Arlington school system
comparatively nothing.
A five-piece set Of plexiglass
solid, representing regular poly
hedra, Mr.. Stover duplicated [
with the surplus glass, for in ]
stance. is marketed for more {
than $l2, he said the other I
day. The cost to Arlington was s
SO cents for a tube of glue, plus
his own labor and the original [
cost Of the glass. /
Mr.. Stover Is a product Of ]
the Arlington schools. He at 9