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Can you find rectangles where the value of the area is the same as the value of the perimeter?
The area of a square inscribed in a circle with a unit radius is, satisfyingly, 2. What is the area of a regular hexagon inscribed in a circle with a unit radius?
Can you find the area of a parallelogram defined by two vectors?
According to an old Indian myth, Sissa ben Dahir was a courtier for a king. The king decided to reward Sissa for his dedication and Sissa asked for one grain of rice to be put on the first square. . . .
Can you find six numbers to go in the Daisy from which you can make all the numbers from 1 to a number bigger than 25?
What is the smallest number with exactly 14 divisors?
Can you guarantee that, for any three numbers you choose, the product of their differences will always be an even number?
Do you know a quick way to check if a number is a multiple of two? How about three, four or six?
Powers of numbers behave in surprising ways. Take a look at some of these and try to explain why they are true.
Can you maximise the area available to a grazing goat?
How many solutions can you find to this sum? Each of the different letters stands for a different number.
Triangle ABC is isosceles while triangle DEF is equilateral. Find one angle in terms of the other two.
Take any four digit number. Move the first digit to the 'back of the queue' and move the rest along. Now add your two numbers. What properties do your answers always have?
Liam's house has a staircase with 12 steps. He can go down the steps one at a time or two at time. In how many different ways can Liam go down the 12 steps?
Mathematicians are always looking for efficient methods for solving problems. How efficient can you be?
Five children went into the sweet shop after school. There were choco bars, chews, mini eggs and lollypops, all costing under 50p. Suggest a way in which Nathan could spend all his money.
If it takes four men one day to build a wall, how long does it take 60,000 men to build a similar wall?
In a three-dimensional version of noughts and crosses, how many winning lines can you make?
If you have only 40 metres of fencing available, what is the maximum area of land you can fence off?
Find a cuboid (with edges of integer values) that has a surface area of exactly 100 square units. Is there more than one? Can you find them all?
What is the greatest volume you can get for a rectangular (cuboid) parcel if the maximum combined length and girth are 2 metres?
A game for 2 or more people, based on the traditional card game Rummy. Players aim to make two `tricks', where each trick has to consist of a picture of a shape, a name that describes that shape, and. . . .
Find at least one way to put in some operation signs (+ - x ÷) to make these digits come to 100.
How many pairs of numbers can you find that add up to a multiple of 11? Do you notice anything interesting about your results?
Can you find an efficient method to work out how many handshakes there would be if hundreds of people met?
There are four children in a family, two girls, Kate and Sally, and two boys, Tom and Ben. How old are the children?
Think of two whole numbers under 10. Take one of them and add 1. Multiply by 5. Add 1 again. Double your answer. Subract 1. Add your second number. Add 2. Double again. Subtract 8. Halve this. . . .
A jigsaw where pieces only go together if the fractions are equivalent.
Ben passed a third of his counters to Jack, Jack passed a quarter of his counters to Emma and Emma passed a fifth of her counters to Ben. After this they all had the same number of counters.
A decorator can buy pink paint from two manufacturers. What is the least number he would need of each type in order to produce different shades of pink.
Is it always possible to combine two paints made up in the ratios 1:x and 1:y and turn them into paint made up in the ratio a:b ? Can you find an efficent way of doing this?
The Egyptians expressed all fractions as the sum of different unit fractions. The Greedy Algorithm might provide us with an efficient way of doing this.
Play the divisibility game to create numbers in which the first two digits make a number divisible by 2, the first three digits make a number divisible by 3...
Different combinations of the weights available allow you to make different totals. Which totals can you make?
The clues for this Sudoku are the product of the numbers in adjacent squares.
Some 4 digit numbers can be written as the product of a 3 digit number and a 2 digit number using the digits 1 to 9 each once and only once. The number 4396 can be written as just such a product. Can. . . .
Four bags contain a large number of 1s, 3s, 5s and 7s. Pick any ten numbers from the bags above so that their total is 37.
The number 2.525252525252.... can be written as a fraction. What is the sum of the denominator and numerator?
Can you arrange these numbers into 7 subsets, each of three numbers, so that when the numbers in each are added together, they make seven consecutive numbers?
Here's a chance to work with large numbers...
An investigation involving adding and subtracting sets of consecutive numbers. Lots to find out, lots to explore.
A country has decided to have just two different coins, 3z and 5z coins. Which totals can be made? Is there a largest total that cannot be made? How do you know?
If you are given the mean, median and mode of five positive whole numbers, can you find the numbers?
Use the differences to find the solution to this Sudoku.
Here is a chance to create some attractive images by rotating shapes through multiples of 90 degrees, or 30 degrees, or 72 degrees or...
Here are four tiles. They can be arranged in a 2 by 2 square so that this large square has a green edge. If the tiles are moved around, we can make a 2 by 2 square with a blue edge... Now try. . . .
Imagine you have a large supply of 3kg and 8kg weights. How many of each weight would you need for the average (mean) of the weights to be 6kg? What other averages could you have?
Caroline and James pick sets of five numbers. Charlie chooses three of them that add together to make a multiple of three. Can they stop him?
Each of the following shapes is made from arcs of a circle of radius r. What is the perimeter of a shape with 3, 4, 5 and n "nodes".
Can all unit fractions be written as the sum of two unit fractions?