### Cubes

Investigate the number of faces you can see when you arrange three cubes in different ways.

### The Big Cheese

Investigate the area of 'slices' cut off this cube of cheese. What would happen if you had different-sized block of cheese to start with?

### Wrapping Presents

Choose a box and work out the smallest rectangle of paper needed to wrap it so that it is completely covered.

##### Stage: 2 Challenge Level:

We have 5 cubes and we're going to put them together, following a few simple rules:
• the cubes must be together face-to-face;
• they must not be toppling over.
We're going to paint the faces that can be seen.  One Brush Load (a kind of unit that we'll use) will paint one square face.

Challenge
Can you find ways of arranging 5 cubes so that:
• you need as few BLs as possible?
• you need as many BLs as possible?
Here are $5$ cubes:

Counting the faces to be painted comes to $15$, so $15$ Brush Loads are needed.  (Remember we're only counting visible faces, so not those that are touching the surface where the cubes are placed.)

But of course we could have placed the $5$ cubes differently, for example:

Counting the faces to be painted now, we have $17$, so $17$ Brush Loads.

Now we'll need $21$ Brush Loads (BLs).