Base Five Blocks for Number Sense

thingiverse

The base-five system is occasionally mentioned in a math textbook; I have personally spent a lot of time playing with it with several groups of elementary teachers. It's enlightening to experience the resistance of our habits of doing math in the base-ten system. The impact of these blocks relies on how they are used to communicate and model mathematical practices. Of course, after Base^3, it is physically impossible to use blocks to show the meaning of a base in a positional value number system. Among the files are (Base =5, unit = 10mm ^ 3): Please note that in a number system other than base-ten, the words ten, hundred, thousand become confusing, although some people do use them. A specific reference such as 5^2 is much clearer. 1. Unit (5^0=1) 2. Ten (5^1) 3. Hundred (5^2) 4. Thousand (5^3) + A different design that saves filament. 5. Multiples of unit, ten, and hundred for batch printing. Have fun!