Abacus Lamp
This is an abacus that has been made into a lamp and is in the living room at Cathy’s mom’s house. There isn’t a lot to say about this particular abacus, but as I was deciding which pictures to post for today, I remembered a short video I saw once about doing mental math by visualizing an abacus. I can’t find the video that I saw (I didn’t try all that hard) but basically, kids were shown a series of long numbers (6, 8, and 10 digits long) and they added them up in their heads. The numbers were flashed on a screen and it went so fast I barely had time to read the numbers and certainly not enough time to actually do anything with them. But these kids were able to add them up accurately in their heads. It was quite remarkable. Apparently, learning to do math with an abacus then allows you to do the same thing only without the actual abacus. Subtraction, multiplication, and division are also done on an abacus, both physically and mentally. I wonder if it’s too late for me to learn to do that.