Worksheet

Fuller, an African sold into slavery at 14 in Virginia, was a man who stumped us all with his great ability to calculate numbers far more efficiently and correctly in his head than we could ever imagine. Over the years his practice with numbers developed his great ability. Many people thought that he was the first black mathematician and also the first black to break through the racial barriers.

 After reading about him one night I fell asleep on the couch only to be awaken in a dream by Fuller himself. While talking to him he said, REverybody in math should be able to do math in his or her head like I do. So I ask you Matt and Steve (also in the dream) share my word and help your friends develop what I have. Here are some problems:

1)    Take all the whole numbers 5-105 with 5 as their last digit and square them. If you canUt, find a pattern and figure it out.

2)    Now take 1 day and find out how many minutes are in that day.

3)    Take your previous answer and find out how many seconds.

4)    Finally, find out how many seconds are in ten days, hundred days, and 365 days.

Now here's the catch, do them in your head. Steve quick to plead for the use of calculators was denied his request when Fuller said Calculators, what rubbish I couldn't even use an abucus. Plus Matt and Steve you are the greatest two mathematicians I have come across. Good luck to you and your classmates. Oh and don't let you teacher give you a bad grade on this you deserve an A. Knowing what Fuller said was true (all of it). I woke up and quickly called Steven to come over so we could work ambitiously on our project. Being that the calculations were long and difficult to do in their heads they decided that calculators could be used after pencil and paper were used to figure the problems out.