Search by Topic

Resources tagged with Working systematically similar to Matchsticks:

Filter by: Content type:
Stage:
Challenge level:

There are 320 results

Broad Topics > Using, Applying and Reasoning about Mathematics > Working systematically

You Owe Me Five Farthings, Say the Bells of St Martin's

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

Use the interactivity to listen to the bells ringing a pattern. Now it's your turn! Play one of the bells yourself. How do you know when it is your turn to ring?

Waiting for Blast Off

Stage: 2 Challenge Level:

10 space travellers are waiting to board their spaceships. There are two rows of seats in the waiting room. Using the rules, where are they all sitting? Can you find all the possible ways?

When Will You Pay Me? Say the Bells of Old Bailey

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

Use the interactivity to play two of the bells in a pattern. How do you know when it is your turn to ring, and how do you know which bell to ring?

Shunting Puzzle

Stage: 2 Challenge Level:

Can you shunt the trucks so that the Cattle truck and the Sheep truck change places and the Engine is back on the main line?

Triangles to Tetrahedra

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

Starting with four different triangles, imagine you have an unlimited number of each type. How many different tetrahedra can you make? Convince us you have found them all.

Map Folding

Stage: 2 Challenge Level:

Take a rectangle of paper and fold it in half, and half again, to make four smaller rectangles. How many different ways can you fold it up?

Squares in Rectangles

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

A 2 by 3 rectangle contains 8 squares and a 3 by 4 rectangle contains 20 squares. What size rectangle(s) contain(s) exactly 100 squares? Can you find them all?

Single Track

Stage: 2 Challenge Level:

What is the best way to shunt these carriages so that each train can continue its journey?

Counting Cards

Stage: 2 Challenge Level:

A magician took a suit of thirteen cards and held them in his hand face down. Every card he revealed had the same value as the one he had just finished spelling. How did this work?

Colour in the Square

Stage: 2 Challenge Level:

Can you put the 25 coloured tiles into the 5 x 5 square so that no column, no row and no diagonal line have tiles of the same colour in them?

Paw Prints

Stage: 2 Challenge Level:

A dog is looking for a good place to bury his bone. Can you work out where he started and ended in each case? What possible routes could he have taken?

Isosceles Triangles

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

Draw some isosceles triangles with an area of $9$cm$^2$ and a vertex at (20,20). If all the vertices must have whole number coordinates, how many is it possible to draw?

Tetrafit

Stage: 2 Challenge Level:

A tetromino is made up of four squares joined edge to edge. Can this tetromino, together with 15 copies of itself, be used to cover an eight by eight chessboard?

Cuboid-in-a-box

Stage: 2 Challenge Level:

What is the smallest cuboid that you can put in this box so that you cannot fit another that's the same into it?

Counters

Stage: 2 Challenge Level:

Hover your mouse over the counters to see which ones will be removed. Click to remover them. The winner is the last one to remove a counter. How you can make sure you win?

Red Even

Stage: 2 Challenge Level:

You have 4 red and 5 blue counters. How many ways can they be placed on a 3 by 3 grid so that all the rows columns and diagonals have an even number of red counters?

Stage: 2 Challenge Level:

How many DIFFERENT quadrilaterals can be made by joining the dots on the 8-point circle?

Creating Cubes

Stage: 2 Challenge Level:

Arrange 9 red cubes, 9 blue cubes and 9 yellow cubes into a large 3 by 3 cube. No row or column of cubes must contain two cubes of the same colour.

Square Corners

Stage: 2 Challenge Level:

What is the greatest number of counters you can place on the grid below without four of them lying at the corners of a square?

Knight's Swap

Stage: 2 Challenge Level:

Swap the stars with the moons, using only knights' moves (as on a chess board). What is the smallest number of moves possible?

Two on Five

Stage: 1 and 2 Challenge Level:

Take 5 cubes of one colour and 2 of another colour. How many different ways can you join them if the 5 must touch the table and the 2 must not touch the table?

Sticks and Triangles

Stage: 2 Challenge Level:

Using different numbers of sticks, how many different triangles are you able to make? Can you make any rules about the numbers of sticks that make the most triangles?

Putting Two and Two Together

Stage: 2 Challenge Level:

In how many ways can you fit two of these yellow triangles together? Can you predict the number of ways two blue triangles can be fitted together?

Broken Toaster

Stage: 2 Short Challenge Level:

Only one side of a two-slice toaster is working. What is the quickest way to toast both sides of three slices of bread?

Stage: 2 Challenge Level:

How can you arrange the 5 cubes so that you need the smallest number of Brush Loads of paint to cover them? Try with other numbers of cubes as well.

Two by One

Stage: 2 Challenge Level:

An activity making various patterns with 2 x 1 rectangular tiles.

Tetrahedra Tester

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

An irregular tetrahedron is composed of four different triangles. Can such a tetrahedron be constructed where the side lengths are 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 units of length?

Button-up Some More

Stage: 2 Challenge Level:

How many ways can you find to do up all four buttons on my coat? How about if I had five buttons? Six ...?

Hexpentas

Stage: 1 and 2 Challenge Level:

How many different ways can you find of fitting five hexagons together? How will you know you have found all the ways?

Celtic Knot

Stage: 2 Challenge Level:

Building up a simple Celtic knot. Try the interactivity or download the cards or have a go on squared paper.

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

How many different symmetrical shapes can you make by shading triangles or squares?

Four Triangles Puzzle

Stage: 1 and 2 Challenge Level:

Cut four triangles from a square as shown in the picture. How many different shapes can you make by fitting the four triangles back together?

3 Sets of Cubes, 2 Surfaces

Stage: 2 Challenge Level:

How many models can you find which obey these rules?

Half Time

Stage: 1 and 2 Challenge Level:

What could the half time scores have been in these Olympic hockey matches?

Ice Cream

Stage: 2 Challenge Level:

You cannot choose a selection of ice cream flavours that includes totally what someone has already chosen. Have a go and find all the different ways in which seven children can have ice cream.

Finding All Possibilities Upper Primary

Stage: 2 Challenge Level:

These activities focus on finding all possible solutions so working in a systematic way will ensure none are left out.

Bean Bags for Bernard's Bag

Stage: 2 Challenge Level:

How could you put eight beanbags in the hoops so that there are four in the blue hoop, five in the red and six in the yellow? Can you find all the ways of doing this?

Pasta Timing

Stage: 2 Challenge Level:

Nina must cook some pasta for 15 minutes but she only has a 7-minute sand-timer and an 11-minute sand-timer. How can she use these timers to measure exactly 15 minutes?

Fake Gold

Stage: 2 Challenge Level:

A merchant brings four bars of gold to a jeweller. How can the jeweller use the scales just twice to identify the lighter, fake bar?

Stage: 1 and 2 Challenge Level:

How could you put these three beads into bags? How many different ways can you do it? How could you record what you've done?

Rolling That Cube

Stage: 1 and 2 Challenge Level:

My cube has inky marks on each face. Can you find the route it has taken? What does each face look like?

Calcunos

Stage: 2 Challenge Level:

If we had 16 light bars which digital numbers could we make? How will you know you've found them all?

Rabbits in the Pen

Stage: 2 Challenge Level:

Using the statements, can you work out how many of each type of rabbit there are in these pens?

Making Cuboids

Stage: 2 Challenge Level:

Let's say you can only use two different lengths - 2 units and 4 units. Using just these 2 lengths as the edges how many different cuboids can you make?

A-magical Number Maze

Stage: 2 Challenge Level:

This magic square has operations written in it, to make it into a maze. Start wherever you like, go through every cell and go out a total of 15!

Room Doubling

Stage: 2 Challenge Level:

Investigate the different ways you could split up these rooms so that you have double the number.

One to Fifteen

Stage: 2 Challenge Level:

Can you put the numbers from 1 to 15 on the circles so that no consecutive numbers lie anywhere along a continuous straight line?

Cuboids

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

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?

Coins (2)

Stage: 2 Challenge Level:

What is the smallest number of coins needed to make up 12 dollars and 83 cents?