Balancing 1
Meg and Mo need to hang their marbles so that they balance. Can you work out what they need to do?
Problem
Meg and Mo are playing Marbles together. After each game, they each put their marbles in a pouch and hang the pouches on a balance while they go off for a snack.
After their first game, they each have the same number of marbles. Meg puts hers in the pouch 50cm to the left of the centre, and Mo puts hers 50cm to the right of the centre. Does this balance?
Suppose that when they come back, Meg moves her pouch to be 80cm away. Find where Mo must put her pouch so that it still balances.
If Meg moves her pouch to be 25cm from the pivot, find where Mo must put her pouch.
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Meg wins the next game, and since she and Mo are playing for keeps, she now has more marbles than her friend.
They discover (by experimenting) that if Meg puts her pouch 30cm from the centre and Mo puts hers 50cm from the centre then the pouches balance.
Fill in the table below so that when the pouches are at the distances shown, they balance.
| Meg | Mo |
| 30cm | 50cm |
| 60cm | |
| 45cm | |
| 25cm |
Can you work out the distances from the centre in the table below that Meg and Mo must put their pouches so that they balance?
| Meg | Mo |
| 90cm | |
| 40cm | |
| 60cm | |
| 20cm | |
| 24cm |
Try to explain how you worked it out.
Getting Started
Use the interactivity to help you complete the tables.
Look at your results in the table.
Student Solutions
Congratulations to Debbie and Fiona, Catriona and Ellie from The Mount School in York who completed full solutions to this problem:
| Meg | Mo |
| 30cm | 50cm |
| 60cm | 100cm |
| 45cm | 75cm |
| 15cm | 25cm |
| Meg | Mo |
| 90cm | 150cm |
| 24cm | 40cm |
| 36cm | 60cm |
| 20cm | 100/3 cm |
| 72/5 cm | 24cm |
| Meg | Mo |
| 10 marbles | 6 marbles |
| 20 marbles | 12 marbles |
| 5 marbles | 3marbles |
| 15marbles | 9 marbles |
| Meg | Mo |
| 30marbles | 18 marbles |
| 12 marbles | 36/5 marbles |
| 35/3 marbles | 7 marbles |
Emma, also from The Mount School, offered the following explanation of how to work on these problems:
You start by finding out how to even the balances out. This is how:
It tells you that Meg has 10 marbles and Mo has 6. Then it tells you to put Meg's bag at 30cm and Mo's bag at 50cm. Then you work it out by doing this:
| Meg | Mo |
| 10 marbles | 6 marbles |
| 30cm | 50cm |
Meg: 10 x 30 = 300
When you multiply the number of marbles in the bag by the distance from the pivot point you get the same answer on both sides.
10 * 90cm = 900
6 * 150cm = 900
Teachers' Resources
This problem offers an interactive environment that introduces students to moments of force by asking them to consider how a balance is affected by altering the weights and the distances from the centre.
Balancing 2 and Balancing 3 are follow up problems.