Other tags that relate to Building with Cubes
Tangram. Games. Investigations. Interactivities. Combinations. Interlocking cubes. Practical Activity. Cubes & cuboids. Working systematically. Visualising.There are 107 results
Broad Topics > Decision Mathematics and Combinatorics > Combinations
Waiting for Blast Off
Age 7 to 11 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?
Tetrahedron Faces
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
One face of a regular tetrahedron is painted blue and each of the remaining faces are painted using one of the colours red, green or yellow. How many different possibilities are there?
Map Folding
Age 7 to 11 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?
Penta Place
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
Penta people, the Pentominoes, always build their houses from five square rooms. I wonder how many different Penta homes you can create?
3 Blocks Towers
Age 5 to 7 Challenge Level:
Take three differently coloured blocks - maybe red, yellow and blue. Make a tower using one of each colour. How many different towers can you make?
Three Ball Line Up
Age 5 to 7 Challenge Level:
Use the interactivity to help get a feel for this problem and to find out all the possible ways the balls could land.
Child's Play
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
A toy has a regular tetrahedron, a cube and a base with triangular and square hollows. If you fit a shape into the correct hollow a bell rings. How many times does the bell ring in a complete game?
Multilink Cubes
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
If you had 36 cubes, what different cuboids could you make?
Triangle Edges
Age 5 to 7 Challenge Level:
How many triangles can you make using sticks that are 3cm, 4cm and 5cm long?
Little Boxes
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
How many different cuboids can you make when you use four CDs or DVDs? How about using five, then six?
Making Cuboids
Age 7 to 11 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?
Noah
Age 5 to 7 Challenge Level:
Noah saw 12 legs walk by into the Ark. How many creatures did he see?
Two and One
Age 5 to 7 Challenge Level:
Terry and Ali are playing a game with three balls. Is it fair that Terry wins when the middle ball is red?
Team Scream
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
Seven friends went to a fun fair with lots of scary rides. They decided to pair up for rides until each friend had ridden once with each of the others. What was the total number rides?
Move a Match
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
How can you arrange these 10 matches in four piles so that when you move one match from three of the piles into the fourth, you end up with the same arrangement?
Cereal Packets
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
How can you put five cereal packets together to make different shapes if you must put them face-to-face?
Elf Suits
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
If these elves wear a different outfit every day for as many days as possible, how many days can their fun last?
Teddy Town
Age 5 to 14 Challenge Level:
There are nine teddies in Teddy Town - three red, three blue and three yellow. There are also nine houses, three of each colour. Can you put them on the map of Teddy Town according to the rules?
Wag Worms
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
When intergalactic Wag Worms are born they look just like a cube. Each year they grow another cube in any direction. Find all the shapes that five-year-old Wag Worms can be.
Two Dice
Age 5 to 7 Challenge Level:
Find all the numbers that can be made by adding the dots on two dice.
Briefcase Lock
Age 5 to 7 Challenge Level:
My briefcase has a three-number combination lock, but I have forgotten the combination. I remember that there's a 3, a 5 and an 8. How many possible combinations are there to try?
Two on Five
Age 5 to 11 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?
Calendar Cubes
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
Make a pair of cubes that can be moved to show all the days of the month from the 1st to the 31st.
Triangle Animals
Age 5 to 7 Challenge Level:
How many different ways can you find to join three equilateral triangles together? Can you convince us that you have found them all?
Train Carriages
Age 5 to 11 Challenge Level:
Suppose there is a train with 24 carriages which are going to be put together to make up some new trains. Can you find all the ways that this can be done?
What Shape and Colour?
Age 5 to 7 Challenge Level:
Can you fill in the empty boxes in the grid with the right shape and colour?
Mixed-up Socks
Age 5 to 7 Challenge Level:
Start with three pairs of socks. Now mix them up so that no mismatched pair is the same as another mismatched pair. Is there more than one way to do it?
Sorting Symmetries
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
Find out how we can describe the "symmetries" of this triangle and investigate some combinations of rotating and flipping it.
Those Tea Cups
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
Place the 16 different combinations of cup/saucer in this 4 by 4 arrangement so that no row or column contains more than one cup or saucer of the same colour.
Button-up Some More
Age 7 to 11 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 ...?
Button-up
Age 5 to 7 Challenge Level:
My coat has three buttons. How many ways can you find to do up all the buttons?
New House
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
In this investigation, you must try to make houses using cubes. If the base must not spill over 4 squares and you have 7 cubes which stand for 7 rooms, what different designs can you come up with?
Red Express Train
Age 5 to 7 Challenge Level:
The Red Express Train usually has five red carriages. How many ways can you find to add two blue carriages?
Let's Investigate Triangles
Age 5 to 7 Challenge Level:
Vincent and Tara are making triangles with the class construction set. They have a pile of strips of different lengths. How many different triangles can they make?
The School Trip
Age 5 to 7 Challenge Level:
Lorenzie was packing his bag for a school trip. He packed four shirts and three pairs of pants. "I will be able to have a different outfit each day", he said. How many days will Lorenzie be away?
A City of Towers
Age 5 to 7 Challenge Level:
In this town, houses are built with one room for each person. There are some families of seven people living in the town. In how many different ways can they build their houses?
Cuisenaire Counting
Age 5 to 7 Challenge Level:
Here are some rods that are different colours. How could I make a yellow rod using white and red rods?
Beads
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
Three beads are threaded on a circular wire and are coloured either red or blue. Can you find all four different combinations?
Semaphore Signals
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
Semaphore is a way to signal the alphabet using two flags. You might want to send a message that contains more than just letters. How many other symbols could you send using this code?
Home City
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
Use the clues to work out which cities Mohamed, Sheng, Tanya and Bharat live in.
Four-triangle Arrangements
Age 5 to 7 Challenge Level:
How many different shapes can you make by putting four right- angled isosceles triangles together?
Ladybirds in the Garden
Age 5 to 7 Challenge Level:
In Sam and Jill's garden there are two sorts of ladybirds with 7 spots or 4 spots. What numbers of total spots can you make?
Jumping Cricket
Age 5 to 7 Challenge Level:
El Crico the cricket has to cross a square patio to get home. He can jump the length of one tile, two tiles and three tiles. Can you find a path that would get El Crico home in three jumps?
Chocoholics
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
George and Jim want to buy a chocolate bar. George needs 2p more and Jim need 50p more to buy it. How much is the chocolate bar?
The Twelve Pointed Star Game
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
Have a go at this game which involves throwing two dice and adding their totals. Where should you place your counters to be more likely to win?
More and More Buckets
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
In this challenge, buckets come in five different sizes. If you choose some buckets, can you investigate the different ways in which they can be filled?
Butterfly Cards
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
Four children were sharing a set of twenty-four butterfly cards. Are there any cards they all want? Are there any that none of them want?
Nineteen Hexagons
Age 5 to 7 Challenge Level:
In this maze of hexagons, you start in the centre at 0. The next hexagon must be a multiple of 2 and the next a multiple of 5. What are the possible paths you could take?
Tiles on a Patio
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
How many ways can you find of tiling the square patio, using square tiles of different sizes?
NRICH is part of the family of activities in the Millennium Mathematics Project.