Next Size Up
The challenge for you is to make a string of six (or more!) graded cubes.
Problem
Getting Started
Using squared card or paper will help.
You could download this squared sheet and print it out on thin card. You will need several sheets to make the larger cubes.
How can you draw a net of a cube? You could look at this problem.
Student Solutions
Class 5AM from St Peter's School, Barcelona, worked on this problem in groups. Here is their report.
Yusuf from Columbia Primary School told us:
We made our cubes using modular origami. We had to measure each piece of paper to make sure it was the correct size and that it would make the right sized cube. We worked out the volume of each cube and wrote it on the side.
Kathy and Pete from Barley Hill Primary School decided to see what patterns they could find by making cuboids.
First we drew the nets of our cuboids.
We noticed that the volume of our first set where we just added one square to the length of the rectangle went up by $1$ each time. The volume of our second set went up by $4$ each time. This is different to the set of cubes in the problem which went up different amounts each time because we only changed one length of our shape.
Here is a picture of their graded cuboids.
Well done for sending in your pictures.
There are lots more shapes you could make - you could see what happens to the volume if you change more than one side of a cuboid.
Teachers' Resources
Next Size Up
Why do this problem?
Possible approach
Key questions
Possible extension
Learners could make a string of other more ambitious shapes such as tetrahedra or octahedra although calculating the exact volume of these might be too tricky.
Possible support
Some children will find this net a useful starting point.