Visualising and representing

Imagine a large cube made from small red cubes being dropped into a pot of yellow paint. How many of the small cubes will have yellow paint on their faces?

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?

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?

There are 27 small cubes in a 3 × 3 × 3 cube, 54 faces being visible at any one time. Is it possible to reorganise these cubes so that by dipping the large cube into a pot of paint three times you can colour every face of all of the smaller cubes?

Can you find the area of a parallelogram defined by two vectors?

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?

Manufacturers need to minimise the amount of material used to make their product. What is the best cross-section for a gutter?

How many intersections do you expect from four straight lines ? Which three lines enclose a triangle with negative co-ordinates for every point ?

What biological growth processes can you fit to these graphs?

Use your skill and knowledge to place various scientific lengths in order of size. Can you judge the length of objects with sizes ranging from 1 Angstrom to 1 million km with no wrong attempts?