Cake again!

When baking a cake, you use an incredible amount of mathematical processes, but you don’t think of the mathematics you are using as you are doing it.

When measuring the ingredients for a cake, we use the basic knowledge of measurement taught to us in primary school.

You need 500g of sugar for the recipe, so half of the bag – FRACTIONS!

The recipe in in ‘kg’ but the measurement on your ingredients are in ‘g’ you have to use your BASIC KNOWLEDGE OF MEASUREMENT!

You only require a quarter of what the recipe makes, to work this out we use RATIOS!

To set the oven timer to cook the cake for 20 minutes we need to understand the basic concept of TIME!

Who knew there would be so much maths in baking, especially ratios!

But why don’t we immediately think of mathematics when we are doing these processes?

It is perhaps due to the mathematical myth discussed in a previous post that ‘We do not use mathematics outside of the classroom’, quite often if we say something to ourselves often enough it becomes truth. If we believe that maths is not applicable in the wider world then perhaps we do not look for it as we do not expect to find it.

When trying to work out how to only make a quarter of the cake, the baker would more than likely spend a great deal of time trying to work out how much of each ingredient they would need, instead of quite simply using a ratio formula.

This relates to the idea of connectedness by Liping Ma. Looking for mathematical links in the wider world, in order that the learning is supported by these connections.

If we as teachers continually make real life applications then perhaps the children will make these applications in their everyday lives. The aim is to not let mathematics die in the classroom, but to revive it in everyday use, where we recognise it, not just simply use it, unknowingly.