Today I played a game with my students called “Deserted Island”. In this activity, the class is divided into groups of 2 or 3 students. They must pretend that they are stranded on an island, unable to leave. But they are allowed to bring 1 object with them. This object can be anything they imagine. Then I give each group a different survival problem that they must solve using each of their objects. The students delivered great presentations, answered all of my questions, and were very creative.

Group A had this problem: One of you is drowning, but none of you know how to swim. How will you save the drowning person?

The 2 students chose to bring a saw and a girl. The student who was not drowning used the saw to cut down a tree and build a boat (with amazing speed) to rescue his friend. (The girl did not help because she resented being considered an “object”).

Group B had this problem: Two of you accidentally fall into quicksand. You are sinking fast! What will you do?

They chose to bring a knife, water, and the always useful: elephant. They theorized that the elephant would sink faster and plug the hole because of its size, so they could kill it for food and drink water later. I felt sorry for the elephant.

Group C had this problem: You meet a pretty girl on the island. She wants to enjoy a romantic dinner with you. What will you prepare?

They chose to bring a gun, a saw, and a lighter. Their solution was to kill a wild animal using the gun and to cook it using the lighter. My favorite part was last: in order to make the dinner more romantic, the last student used his saw to make a wooden table and chair for the girl. How thoughtful!

After playing this game, the other Teacher introduced a mathmatical problem involving a hunter who leaves his tent to search for animals. Returning to his tent hours later, he sees the backside of a bear running away. What color is the bear? (I left out some details because this was how random the question seemed to me at first). I imagined the bear sitting down in a chair with blue wet paint. Then the teacher re-explained how the man how traveled South, East, and North. How is it possible that he returned to his tent without traveling West? This time I imagined that it was not actually a bear. The man had actually gone backwards in time and was witnessing himself leaving his tent, mistaking it for a bear! (I have the mind of a screenwriter, not a mathmatician.) It turns out that the answer was white, because this unique directional situation could only happen in the North Pole, where bears are white.

Recently, I have been assisting a Math Teacher at Yongmoon High School to teach a Math Class in English. Our 11 students have a unique chance to engage in content-based learning, essentially studying two subjects at the same time. I’m not particularly skilled at Math, so this class has been a great opportunity for me to review and learn new things.

One particular problem that a student presented to us was about satellites. When listening to his presentation, I wrote down questions that popped into my head. My questions were: How many satellites are there currently in space? Where do they come from? Do they drift or remain motionless? Are they ever damaged by asteroids? The image of WALL-E crashing through a wall of old satellites also came to mind. I searched for the answers online later. This is what I discovered:

Satellites orbit the Earth (I guess that may fairly obvious to most people). They range in all different sizes, with the smallest ones costing a few million dollars, while the heavy ones cost tens of millions. Throughout history, there have been about 24,500 man-made objects launched into space. Among those, about 8,000 were satellites. The majority were incinerated when rentering the Earth’s atmosphere, while others fell into unstable orbits. Another source told me that there are about 3,000 satellites currently in orbit, with only about 1,000 still active. Satellites typically have a lifespan of 5-20 years. Russia and the former USSR have launched about 1,400, while the USA has launched about 1,000. (Other countries include Japan: 100, China: 80, Canada: 25, and South Korea: 10). Their purposes range from monitoring weather patterns to possibly being able to destroy other satellites in an event of international war.  (The demon of fear is always out there). But what I find fascinating is that most of us have never seen a satellite in person, yet we now depend on them every day with our smart phones, web usage, TV broadcasting, and weather forecasts.

Sometimes I think people are like satellites. People expect us to follow a certain path, but sometimes we lose our path or change directions or simply stop moving. But unlike satellites, we have the potential to be found again. It is ironic that we connect with people far away from us by using machines which are even further away, drifting through Space on their own.