Wassup wit the Abacus?

Did you have one of these when you went to school? If you did you are probably showing your age. Mind you who knows what they are teaching kids these days? It is of course the humble Abacus.

According to Wikipedia...An abacus, also called a counting frame, is a calculating tool used primarily in parts of Asia for performing mathematical processes. Today, abacuses are often constructed as a bamboo frame with beads sliding on wires, but originally they were beans or stones moved in grooves in sand or on tablets of wood, stone, or metal. The abacus was in use centuries before the adoption of the written modern numeral system and is still widely used by merchants, traders and clerks in Asia, Africa, and elsewhere.

I was wondering how I could help my five year old daughter with her maths and suddenly a revelatory image of an abacus flew into my mind...EUREKA!

So I was talking to my dad who quickly and unbeknownst to me, whipped up an awesome abacus. Thanks Dad! You are the man!

Now, our Abacus is modelled on one used in a Danish Elementary School (which is based on the Russian Abacus) - why choose that one? Good question. In its basic form it can be used to count numbers from 1 - 100 and perform basic addition and subtraction - good for the kids.

The most popular seems to be the Japanese Soroban. But somehow this seemed a little complicated for my kids.

Japanese Soroban

The user of an abacus who slides the beads of the abacus by hand is called an abacist.

I am the ABACIST! I have been challenging myself to complex addition and Subtraction equations and the Abacus is not only accurate but it is surprisingly fast. Giving the rows values from bottom to top:

1. Ones


2. Tens


3. Hundreds


4. Thousands etc

You get the picture. Massive numbers can be calculated!

My wife is not at all enthused by my obvious skills but i'm not daunted. I am trying to figure out if Multiplication and Division can be done on a 'Russian' type Abacus. It can be done on a Soroban but hey...it's for the kids right?

Anyone keen for an Abacus Challenge? I know - I'm a big child-like Geek!

Check this out...funny in a scary way.