### The Development of Algebra - 2

This is the second article in a two part series on the history of Algebra from about 2000 BCE to about 1000 CE.

# 3D Stacks

##### Stage: 2 and 3 Challenge Level:

This activity may be used as a follow-on for those who have successfully worked at Doplication.

It's kind of two sets of three adjacent cubes with balls at each vertex. Then there is a ball in the centre of each cube.
Towards the bottom left of the picture are the eight large balls, then going backwards there are eight medium red balls and further back are eight small ones.
In the centre of the front three cubes are three orange balls and at the centre of the rear cubes are three brown ones.

In Doplication you would have had;

which we called $4$ ? $3$.

In this activity it would be called something different involving $4, 3, 2$. Just for now I am going to use @, so the diagram above represents $4$@$3$@$2$.

I invite you to explore many such arrangements and find a way of recording your results.
You might like to just look at the arrangements that are like cubes - $3$@$3$@$3$ , $4$@$4$@$4$, $5$@$5$@$5$, etc.

As with most mathematics it's good to compare so maybe compare the results for squares in Doplication and cubes in 3D Stacks.