Filter by: Content type: ALL Problems Articles Games Stage: All Stage 1&2 Stage 2&3 Stage 3&4 Stage 4&5 Challenge level:
Nine squares with side lengths 1, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 14, 15, and 18 cm can be fitted together to form a rectangle. What are the dimensions of the rectangle?
What can you say about these shapes? This problem challenges you to create shapes with different areas and perimeters.
This practical challenge invites you to investigate the different squares you can make on a square geoboard or pegboard.
Here are many ideas for you to investigate - all linked with the number 2000.
How many ways can you find of tiling the square patio, using square tiles of different sizes?
In the four examples below identical squares of side one unit contain some circles shaded blue. In which of the four examples is the shaded area greatest?
Can you draw a square in which the perimeter is numerically equal to the area?
What fractions of the largest circle are the two shaded regions?
A hallway floor is tiled and each tile is one foot square. Given that the number of tiles around the perimeter is EXACTLY half the total number of tiles, find the possible dimensions of the hallway.
How many tiles do we need to tile these patios?
A follow-up activity to Tiles in the Garden.
An investigation that gives you the opportunity to make and justify predictions.
Can you help the children find the two triangles which have the lengths of two sides numerically equal to their areas?
These rectangles have been torn. How many squares did each one have inside it before it was ripped?
How many centimetres of rope will I need to make another mat just like the one I have here?
If I use 12 green tiles to represent my lawn, how many different ways could I arrange them? How many border tiles would I need each time?
What is the smallest number of tiles needed to tile this patio? Can you investigate patios of different sizes?
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?
A thoughtful shepherd used bales of straw to protect the area around his lambs. Explore how you can arrange the bales.
Cut differently-sized square corners from a square piece of paper to make boxes without lids. Do they all have the same volume?
Investigate all the different squares you can make on this 5 by 5 grid by making your starting side go from the bottom left hand point. Can you find out the areas of all these squares?
If you have only 40 metres of fencing available, what is the maximum area of land you can fence off?
An activity for high-attaining learners which involves making a new cylinder from a cardboard tube.
It's easy to work out the areas of most squares that we meet, but what if they were tilted?
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?
Polygons drawn on square dotty paper have dots on their perimeter (p) and often internal (i) ones as well. Find a relationship between p, i and the area of the polygons.
This article, written for teachers, discusses the merits of different kinds of resources: those which involve exploration and those which centre on calculation.
You have a 12 by 9 foot carpet with an 8 by 1 foot hole exactly in the middle. Cut the carpet into two pieces to make a 10 by 10 foot square carpet.
Use the interactivity to find all the different right-angled triangles you can make by just moving one corner of the starting triangle.
Can you find the area of a parallelogram defined by two vectors?
I cut this square into two different shapes. What can you say about the relationship between them?
Explore one of these five pictures.
Can you rank these sets of quantities in order, from smallest to largest? Can you provide convincing evidence for your rankings?
I'm thinking of a rectangle with an area of 24. What could its perimeter be?
These pictures were made by starting with a square, finding the half-way point on each side and joining those points up. You could investigate your own starting shape.
How can you change the area of a shape but keep its perimeter the same? How can you change the perimeter but keep the area the same?
Derive a formula for finding the area of any kite.
A task which depends on members of the group noticing the needs of others and responding.
What is the largest number of circles we can fit into the frame without them overlapping? How do you know? What will happen if you try the other shapes?
Explore this interactivity and see if you can work out what it does. Could you use it to estimate the area of a shape?
Determine the total shaded area of the 'kissing triangles'.
Can you find rectangles where the value of the area is the same as the value of the perimeter?
Can you work out the area of the inner square and give an explanation of how you did it?
Place four pebbles on the sand in the form of a square. Keep adding as few pebbles as necessary to double the area. How many extra pebbles are added each time?
What is the shape and dimensions of a box that will contain six cups and have as small a surface area as possible.
Which is a better fit, a square peg in a round hole or a round peg in a square hole?
At the corner of the cube circular arcs are drawn and the area enclosed shaded. What fraction of the surface area of the cube is shaded? Try working out the answer without recourse to pencil and. . . .
Semicircles are drawn on the sides of a rectangle ABCD. A circle passing through points ABCD carves out four crescent-shaped regions. Prove that the sum of the areas of the four crescents is equal to. . . .
Investigate the different ways of cutting a perfectly circular pie into equal pieces using exactly 3 cuts. The cuts have to be along chords of the circle (which might be diameters).
What are the areas of these triangles? What do you notice? Can you generalise to other "families" of triangles?