St Declans N.S.
Homepage Office News About St Declans N.S. Sports News Who was St Declan? History of St Declans N.S. Class Work Special Events School Archives	Maths Week at the WIT – Oct ‘11 Maths Magic as part of Maths Week 2011 On the 18^th of October our 6^th class went to W.I.T for a maths seminar, which was organised as part of Maths Week. An English man named Andrew Jeffrey was hosting it and he was very humourous and funny. He wrote a book called ‘Magic for kids’. He made one boy very happy by making him think he was going home with €20 but sadly about ten minutes later he took it back off him and the trick was called "How to get your money back"! He made maths seem fun and not dull and boring. The seminar took place in the W.I.T auditorium. About three other schools were there but I didn't know any of them. Mr. Jeffrey was looking for volunteers and he picked out Jake Sheridan from our class. He asked him to turn a picture around very very slowly. The picture looked like an old jester and then Jake turned it around and there was a beautiful princess. This was called an "illusion". With the €20 he took from the child he gave it to his teacher for telling the truth. He then spoke to us about a lie detector. It's proven that whenever you tell a lie your heart beats faster. He did another trick by not looking at the number a girl had written down. And he figured it out by doing a magic square where in every direction it added up to the same number and the number was 45. Then he took out huge rectangular playing cards. We all thought he had arranged them in a certain order and he got someone else to shuffle them. He asked him to tell the truth about which card the boy had chosen but the boy didn’t. He told him to say a number and he said ten but he shuffled them all up again and he got the six of clubs, which was the boy’s card! It was a fun and exciting day at W.I.T and we all got to see that maths can be fun. By Owen Mackey, 6^th Class