Resources tagged with: Visualising

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Broad Topics > Thinking Mathematically > Visualising

Trice

Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:

ABCDEFGH is a 3 by 3 by 3 cube. Point P is 1/3 along AB (that is AP : PB = 1 : 2), point Q is 1/3 along GH and point R is 1/3 along ED. What is the area of the triangle PQR?

Like a Circle in a Spiral

Age 7 to 16 Challenge Level:

A cheap and simple toy with lots of mathematics. Can you interpret the images that are produced? Can you predict the pattern that will be produced using different wheels?

Tied Up

Age 14 to 16 Short Challenge Level:

How much of the field can the animals graze?

The Old Goats

Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:

A rectangular field has two posts with a ring on top of each post. There are two quarrelsome goats and plenty of ropes which you can tie to their collars. How can you secure them so they can't. . . .

Age 14 to 16 Challenge Level:

Four rods are hinged at their ends to form a convex quadrilateral. Investigate the different shapes that the quadrilateral can take. Be patient this problem may be slow to load.

Cube Paths

Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:

Given a 2 by 2 by 2 skeletal cube with one route `down' the cube. How many routes are there from A to B?

Isosceles Triangles

Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:

Draw some isosceles triangles with an area of $9$cm$^2$ and a vertex at (20,20). If all the vertices must have whole number coordinates, how many is it possible to draw?

Tilting Triangles

Age 14 to 16 Challenge Level:

A right-angled isosceles triangle is rotated about the centre point of a square. What can you say about the area of the part of the square covered by the triangle as it rotates?

Playground Snapshot

Age 7 to 14 Challenge Level:

The image in this problem is part of a piece of equipment found in the playground of a school. How would you describe it to someone over the phone?

Dotty Triangles

Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:

Imagine an infinitely large sheet of square dotty paper on which you can draw triangles of any size you wish (providing each vertex is on a dot). What areas is it/is it not possible to draw?

Star Gazing

Age 14 to 16 Challenge Level:

Find the ratio of the outer shaded area to the inner area for a six pointed star and an eight pointed star.

Triangular Tantaliser

Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:

Draw all the possible distinct triangles on a 4 x 4 dotty grid. Convince me that you have all possible triangles.

Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:

Four rods, two of length a and two of length b, are linked to form a kite. The linkage is moveable so that the angles change. What is the maximum area of the kite?

Weighty Problem

Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:

The diagram shows a very heavy kitchen cabinet. It cannot be lifted but it can be pivoted around a corner. The task is to move it, without sliding, in a series of turns about the corners so that it. . . .

Rolling Around

Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:

A circle rolls around the outside edge of a square so that its circumference always touches the edge of the square. Can you describe the locus of the centre of the circle?

An Unusual Shape

Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:

Can you maximise the area available to a grazing goat?

All Tied Up

Age 14 to 16 Challenge Level:

A ribbon runs around a box so that it makes a complete loop with two parallel pieces of ribbon on the top. How long will the ribbon be?

Efficient Cutting

Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:

Use a single sheet of A4 paper and make a cylinder having the greatest possible volume. The cylinder must be closed off by a circle at each end.

LOGO Challenge - Circles as Animals

Age 11 to 16 Challenge Level:

See if you can anticipate successive 'generations' of the two animals shown here.

Efficient Packing

Age 14 to 16 Challenge Level:

How efficiently can you pack together disks?

Corridors

Age 14 to 16 Challenge Level:

A 10x10x10 cube is made from 27 2x2 cubes with corridors between them. Find the shortest route from one corner to the opposite corner.

Cutting a Cube

Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:

A half-cube is cut into two pieces by a plane through the long diagonal and at right angles to it. Can you draw a net of these pieces? Are they identical?

Polygon Rings

Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:

Join pentagons together edge to edge. Will they form a ring?

Constructing Triangles

Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:

Generate three random numbers to determine the side lengths of a triangle. What triangles can you draw?

Age 14 to 16 Challenge Level:

In this problem we are faced with an apparently easy area problem, but it has gone horribly wrong! What happened?

The Farmers' Field Boundary

Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:

The farmers want to redraw their field boundary but keep the area the same. Can you advise them?

Polygon Pictures

Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:

Can you work out how these polygon pictures were drawn, and use that to figure out their angles?

Tessellating Hexagons

Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:

Which hexagons tessellate?

Rati-o

Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:

Points P, Q, R and S each divide the sides AB, BC, CD and DA respectively in the ratio of 2 : 1. Join the points. What is the area of the parallelogram PQRS in relation to the original rectangle?

Shear Magic

Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:

Explore the area of families of parallelograms and triangles. Can you find rules to work out the areas?

Counting Triangles

Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:

Triangles are formed by joining the vertices of a skeletal cube. How many different types of triangle are there? How many triangles altogether?

Marbles in a Box

Age 11 to 16 Challenge Level:

How many winning lines can you make in a three-dimensional version of noughts and crosses?

One and Three

Age 14 to 16 Challenge Level:

Two motorboats travelling up and down a lake at constant speeds leave opposite ends A and B at the same instant, passing each other, for the first time 600 metres from A, and on their return, 400. . . .

The Spider and the Fly

Age 14 to 16 Challenge Level:

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?

Tourism

Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:

If you can copy a network without lifting your pen off the paper and without drawing any line twice, then it is traversable. Decide which of these diagrams are traversable.

Tetrahedra Tester

Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:

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?

Chess

Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:

What would be the smallest number of moves needed to move a Knight from a chess set from one corner to the opposite corner of a 99 by 99 square board?

Dissect

Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:

What is the minimum number of squares a 13 by 13 square can be dissected into?

Tic Tac Toe

Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:

In the game of Noughts and Crosses there are 8 distinct winning lines. How many distinct winning lines are there in a game played on a 3 by 3 by 3 board, with 27 cells?

Square It

Age 11 to 16 Challenge Level:

Players take it in turns to choose a dot on the grid. The winner is the first to have four dots that can be joined to form a square.

Framed

Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:

Seven small rectangular pictures have one inch wide frames. The frames are removed and the pictures are fitted together like a jigsaw to make a rectangle of length 12 inches. Find the dimensions of. . . .

Tetra Square

Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:

ABCD is a regular tetrahedron and the points P, Q, R and S are the midpoints of the edges AB, BD, CD and CA. Prove that PQRS is a square.

Take Ten

Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:

Is it possible to remove ten unit cubes from a 3 by 3 by 3 cube so that the surface area of the remaining solid is the same as the surface area of the original?

AMGM

Age 14 to 16 Challenge Level:

Can you use the diagram to prove the AM-GM inequality?

Thinking Through, and By, Visualising

Age 7 to 16

This article is based on some of the ideas that emerged during the production of a book which takes visualising as its focus. We began to identify problems which helped us to take a structured view. . . .

Soma - So Good

Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:

Can you mentally fit the 7 SOMA pieces together to make a cube? Can you do it in more than one way?

Drilling Many Cubes

Age 7 to 14 Challenge Level:

A useful visualising exercise which offers opportunities for discussion and generalising, and which could be used for thinking about the formulae needed for generating the results on a spreadsheet.

On the Edge

Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:

If you move the tiles around, can you make squares with different coloured edges?

Something in Common

Age 14 to 16 Challenge Level:

A square of area 3 square units cannot be drawn on a 2D grid so that each of its vertices have integer coordinates, but can it be drawn on a 3D grid? Investigate squares that can be drawn.

Coloured Edges

Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:

The whole set of tiles is used to make a square. This has a green and blue border. There are no green or blue tiles anywhere in the square except on this border. How many tiles are there in the set?