Other tags that relate to The Old Goats
Regular polygons and circles. Visualising. Creating and manipulating expressions and formulae. Generalising. Interactivities. Cubes & cuboids. Pythagoras' theorem. Loci. Mathematical reasoning & proof. 2D shapes and their properties.There are 123 results
Broad Topics > Using, Applying and Reasoning about Mathematics > Generalising
2001 Spatial Oddity
Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:
With one cut a piece of card 16 cm by 9 cm can be made into two pieces which can be rearranged to form a square 12 cm by 12 cm. Explain how this can be done.
Cubes Within Cubes Revisited
Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:
Imagine starting with one yellow cube and covering it all over with a single layer of red cubes, and then covering that cube with a layer of blue cubes. How many red and blue cubes would you need?
Christmas Chocolates
Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:
How could Penny, Tom and Matthew work out how many chocolates there are in different sized boxes?
Tilted Squares
Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:
It's easy to work out the areas of most squares that we meet, but what if they were tilted?
Squaring the Circle and Circling the Square
Age 14 to 16 Challenge Level:
If you continue the pattern, can you predict what each of the following areas will be? Try to explain your prediction.
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?
Hidden Rectangles
Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:
Rectangles are considered different if they vary in size or have different locations. How many different rectangles can be drawn on a chessboard?
Pareq Calc
Age 14 to 16 Challenge Level:
Triangle ABC is an equilateral triangle with three parallel lines going through the vertices. Calculate the length of the sides of the triangle if the perpendicular distances between the parallel. . . .
Polycircles
Age 14 to 16 Challenge Level:
Show that for any triangle it is always possible to construct 3 touching circles with centres at the vertices. Is it possible to construct touching circles centred at the vertices of any polygon?
Semi-square
Age 14 to 16 Challenge Level:
What is the ratio of the area of a square inscribed in a semicircle to the area of the square inscribed in the entire circle?
Route to Infinity
Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:
Can you describe this route to infinity? Where will the arrows take you next?
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.
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?
Is There a Theorem?
Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:
Draw a square. A second square of the same size slides around the first always maintaining contact and keeping the same orientation. How far does the dot travel?
Picturing Triangular Numbers
Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:
Triangular numbers can be represented by a triangular array of squares. What do you notice about the sum of identical triangle numbers?
Picturing Square Numbers
Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:
Square numbers can be represented as the sum of consecutive odd numbers. What is the sum of 1 + 3 + ..... + 149 + 151 + 153?
Go Forth and Generalise
Age 11 to 14
Spotting patterns can be an important first step - explaining why it is appropriate to generalise is the next step, and often the most interesting and important.
Shear Magic
Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:
What are the areas of these triangles? What do you notice? Can you generalise to other "families" of triangles?
In a Spin
Age 14 to 16 Challenge Level:
What is the volume of the solid formed by rotating this right angled triangle about the hypotenuse?
Partitioning Revisited
Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:
We can show that (x + 1)² = x² + 2x + 1 by considering the area of an (x + 1) by (x + 1) square. Show in a similar way that (x + 2)² = x² + 4x + 4
Make 37
Age 7 to 14 Challenge Level:
Four bags contain a large number of 1s, 3s, 5s and 7s. Pick any ten numbers from the bags above so that their total is 37.
Mind Reading
Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:
Think of a number, add one, double it, take away 3, add the number you first thought of, add 7, divide by 3 and take away the number you first thought of. You should now be left with 2. How do I. . . .
Regular Hexagon Loops
Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:
Make some loops out of regular hexagons. What rules can you discover?
More Number Pyramids
Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:
When number pyramids have a sequence on the bottom layer, some interesting patterns emerge...
Seven Squares - Group-worthy Task
Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:
Choose a couple of the sequences. Try to picture how to make the next, and the next, and the next... Can you describe your reasoning?
Hypotenuse Lattice Points
Age 14 to 16 Challenge Level:
The triangle OMN has vertices on the axes with whole number co-ordinates. How many points with whole number coordinates are there on the hypotenuse MN?
...on the Wall
Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:
Explore the effect of reflecting in two intersecting mirror lines.
One, Three, Five, Seven
Age 11 to 16 Challenge Level:
A game for 2 players. Set out 16 counters in rows of 1,3,5 and 7. Players take turns to remove any number of counters from a row. The player left with the last counter looses.
Squares, Squares and More Squares
Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:
Can you dissect a square into: 4, 7, 10, 13... other squares? 6, 9, 12, 15... other squares? 8, 11, 14... other squares?
Searching for Mean(ing)
Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:
Imagine you have a large supply of 3kg and 8kg weights. How many of each weight would you need for the average (mean) of the weights to be 6kg? What other averages could you have?
Enclosing Squares
Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:
Can you find sets of sloping lines that enclose a square?
Converging Means
Age 14 to 16 Challenge Level:
Take any two positive numbers. Calculate the arithmetic and geometric means. Repeat the calculations to generate a sequence of arithmetic means and geometric means. Make a note of what happens to the. . . .
Konigsberg Plus
Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:
Euler discussed whether or not it was possible to stroll around Koenigsberg crossing each of its seven bridges exactly once. Experiment with different numbers of islands and bridges.
Number Pyramids
Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:
Try entering different sets of numbers in the number pyramids. How does the total at the top change?
Sum Equals Product
Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:
The sum of the numbers 4 and 1 [1/3] is the same as the product of 4 and 1 [1/3]; that is to say 4 + 1 [1/3] = 4 × 1 [1/3]. What other numbers have the sum equal to the product and can this be so for. . . .
Winning Lines
Age 7 to 16
An article for teachers and pupils that encourages you to look at the mathematical properties of similar games.
Consecutive Negative Numbers
Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:
Do you notice anything about the solutions when you add and/or subtract consecutive negative numbers?
Sliding Puzzle
Age 11 to 16 Challenge Level:
The aim of the game is to slide the green square from the top right hand corner to the bottom left hand corner in the least number of moves.
Frogs
Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:
How many moves does it take to swap over some red and blue frogs? Do you have a method?
Handshakes
Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:
Can you find an efficient method to work out how many handshakes there would be if hundreds of people met?
Who Is the Fairest of Them All ?
Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:
Explore the effect of combining enlargements.
Nim-7 for Two
Age 5 to 14 Challenge Level:
Nim-7 game for an adult and child. Who will be the one to take the last counter?
Squares in Rectangles
Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:
A 2 by 3 rectangle contains 8 squares and a 3 by 4 rectangle contains 20 squares. What size rectangle(s) contain(s) exactly 100 squares? Can you find them all?
Mindreader
Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:
A little bit of algebra explains this 'magic'. Ask a friend to pick 3 consecutive numbers and to tell you a multiple of 3. Then ask them to add the four numbers and multiply by 67, and to tell you. . . .
Steps to the Podium
Age 7 to 14 Challenge Level:
It starts quite simple but great opportunities for number discoveries and patterns!
Magic Letters
Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:
Charlie has made a Magic V. Can you use his example to make some more? And how about Magic Ls, Ns and Ws?
Steel Cables
Age 14 to 16 Challenge Level:
Some students have been working out the number of strands needed for different sizes of cable. Can you make sense of their solutions?
Generating Triples
Age 14 to 16 Challenge Level:
Sets of integers like 3, 4, 5 are called Pythagorean Triples, because they could be the lengths of the sides of a right-angled triangle. Can you find any more?
One O Five
Age 11 to 14 Challenge Level:
You can work out the number someone else is thinking of as follows. Ask a friend to think of any natural number less than 100. Then ask them to tell you the remainders when this number is divided by. . . .
NRICH is part of the family of activities in the Millennium Mathematics Project.