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Chris and Jo put two red and four blue ribbons in a box. They each pick a ribbon from the box without looking. Jo wins if the two ribbons are the same colour. Is the game fair?
Can you find rectangles where the value of the area is the same as the value of the perimeter?
Can you find the area of a parallelogram defined by two vectors?
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?
Which has the greatest area, a circle or a square inscribed in an isosceles, right angle triangle?
What is the same and what is different about these circle questions? What connections can you make?
Have a go at creating these images based on circles. What do you notice about the areas of the different sections?
Can you maximise the area available to a grazing goat?
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. . . .
Explore when it is possible to construct a circle which just touches all four sides of a quadrilateral.
A spider is sitting in the middle of one of the smallest walls in a room and a fly is resting beside the window. What is the shortest distance the spider would have to crawl to catch the fly?
A square of area 40 square cms is inscribed in a semicircle. Find the area of the square that could be inscribed in a circle of the same radius.
A napkin is folded so that a corner coincides with the midpoint of an opposite edge . Investigate the three triangles formed .
It is known that the area of the largest equilateral triangular section of a cube is 140sq cm. What is the side length of the cube? The distances between the centres of two adjacent faces of. . . .
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.
This shape comprises four semi-circles. What is the relationship between the area of the shaded region and the area of the circle on AB as diameter?
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. . . .
How many solutions can you find to this sum? Each of the different letters stands for a different number.
If it takes four men one day to build a wall, how long does it take 60,000 men to build a similar wall?
A 1 metre cube has one face on the ground and one face against a wall. A 4 metre ladder leans against the wall and just touches the cube. How high is the top of the ladder above the ground?
What is the greatest volume you can get for a rectangular (cuboid) parcel if the maximum combined length and girth are 2 metres?
Triangle ABC is isosceles while triangle DEF is equilateral. Find one angle in terms of the other two.
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.
Can you find an efficient method to work out how many handshakes there would be if hundreds of people met?
In a three-dimensional version of noughts and crosses, how many winning lines can you make?
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. . . .
Different combinations of the weights available allow you to make different totals. Which totals can you make?
Two ladders are propped up against facing walls. The end of the first ladder is 10 metres above the foot of the first wall. The end of the second ladder is 5 metres above the foot of the second. . . .
There are four children in a family, two girls, Kate and Sally, and two boys, Tom and Ben. How old are the children?
If you have only 40 metres of fencing available, what is the maximum area of land you can fence off?
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 you guarantee that, for any three numbers you choose, the product of their differences will always be an even number?
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.
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?
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?
Which of these games would you play to give yourself the best possible chance of winning a prize?
A plastic funnel is used to pour liquids through narrow apertures. What shape funnel would use the least amount of plastic to manufacture for any specific volume ?
A jigsaw where pieces only go together if the fractions are equivalent.
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.
Do you know a quick way to check if a number is a multiple of two? How about three, four or six?
Some people offer advice on how to win at games of chance, or how to influence probability in your favour. Can you decide whether advice is good or not?
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...
The clues for this Sudoku are the product of the numbers in adjacent squares.
The diagonals of a trapezium divide it into four parts. Can you create a trapezium where three of those parts are equal in area?
A hexagon, with sides alternately a and b units in length, is inscribed in a circle. How big is the radius of the circle?
If the hypotenuse (base) length is 100cm and if an extra line splits the base into 36cm and 64cm parts, what were the side lengths for the original right-angled triangle?
A circle is inscribed in a triangle which has side lengths of 8, 15 and 17 cm. What is the radius of the circle?
How many different symmetrical shapes can you make by shading triangles or squares?