Christmas has come early to my local Co-Op. I was intrigued enough to buy and eat the new Christmas chocolate, but not before marvelling at the mathematical elegance of it’s structure:

Image credit: http://www.distinctiveconfectionery.com/personalised-christmas-triangular-toblerone-box.html

The slab of equilateral chocolate breaks up into 9 smaller equilateral triangles. Or you could tessellate more of the big triangle.

Break off the corners and you get a hexagon.

Break off one corner and you get a trapezium.

Two triangles together makes a parallelogram … or it a rhombus? Good discussion point there!

The bar weighs 60g – how much does each triangle weigh? What about the weights of the other shapes you could make?

The dimensions are listed as 180x180x10mm. Where would these measurements fit on the triangle? Is it the length, width and height? Why? Can you calculate the dimensions of the other possible shapes?

Once you start thinking about it, there are lots of activities you could do … and there is the potential to eat your work! As usual, if you are going to do this, make sure you are aware of food allegeries.