What happens to the area of a square if you double the length of
the sides? Try the same thing with rectangles, diamonds and other
shapes. How do the four smaller ones fit into the larger one?
Investigate the area of 'slices' cut off this cube of cheese. What
would happen if you had different-sized block of cheese to start
Cut differently-sized square corners from a square piece of paper
to make boxes without lids. Do they all have the same volume?
What happens if you join every second point on this circle? How
about every third point? Try with different steps and see if you
can predict what will happen.
Polygons drawn on square dotty paper have dots on their perimeter
(p) and often internal (i) ones as well. Find a relationship
between p, i and the area of the polygons.
In how many ways can you fit all three pieces together to make
shapes with line symmetry?
What size square corners should be cut from a square piece of paper to make a box with the largest possible volume?
Jacob worked really hard on this investigation.
Go to last month's problems to see more solutions.
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 of the purposes and skills of visualising.
Start with a large square, join the midpoints of its sides, you'll see four right angled triangles. Remove these triangles, a second square is left. Repeat the operation. What happens?
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