Abstract:

Mathematics is often considered the queen of sciences. It is one of the first subjects that pupils encounter in the first grade of elementary school and it accompanies them for the rest of their lives. Although it is necessary in many specializations and in practical life, it doesn’t usually belong among popular subjects. For this reason, not only primary and secondary school teachers are trying to come up with a new motivation that would make mathematics classes more attractive. One of these possibilities is the connection of mathematics with geocaching – an outdoor game, which is very popular nowadays and in which players search for hidden boxes, so-called geocaches. Geocaching is an activity that very often extends into some of many fields of human activity, such as computing and programming, physics, geography, history and others. Equally often, logical and mathematical tasks must be solved within the game. Players are not only presented with new and interesting information, but in many cases, it is necessary to use mathematical procedures and a mathematical apparatus to solve tasks, which the player must understand and use, thus broadening his horizons. Finally, it should be noted that the attractiveness of this game is also enhanced by the location of some caches, which are located in interesting and nice places. In this paper, we will try to present some of the mathematical and logical tasks that geocaching players may encounter during the game and which we believe can be used as a motivation to study mathematics from primary school to college.

Keywords:

Popularization of mathematics, geocaching, geocache, geographic coordinates, mathematical problems, logical problems, mathematical games.