Objective
By the end of this lesson, you will be able to understand basic concepts of geometry and dimensions through the lens of Flatland by Edwin Abbott.
Materials and Prep
Materials: Paper, pencil, ruler, scissors
Prep: Read a summary of Flatland to familiarize yourself with the story
Activities
1. Create your own Flatland: Draw a square on a piece of paper and imagine it as a Flatland world. Add geometric shapes as houses, trees, and characters.
2. Explore dimensions: Cut out different sized squares and rectangles. Discuss how these 2D shapes can represent different dimensions in Flatland.
3. Role-play as characters from Flatland: Act out scenarios from the book to understand how beings in different dimensions interact.
Talking Points
- Imagine living in a world called Flatland, where everything is flat like a piece of paper. You would only see shapes like squares, triangles, and circles.
- In Flatland, beings can only move left, right, forward, or backward. They cannot move up or down like we can in our 3D world.
- Just like how a square in Flatland would see another square as a line, beings in higher dimensions would see us as flat shapes if they looked at us from above.
- Think about how difficult it would be for a Flatlander to understand the concept of height or depth, just like how it might be hard for us to understand higher dimensions.