Tag Archives: chocolate

242. Edible Inspiration

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Calling all creative thinkers!

What mathematical questions could you set from this picture?

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Here are a few to start you off:

1. Sequences – do the increasing  number of chocolates in each layer form a sequence (in 2D, in 3D)? If so, what is the general term? Is it geometric or arithmetic?

2. Series – if it is an arithmetic sequence, can you find the sum of a finite number of layers? Which layer would have the 1000th chocolate?

3. Geometry – what shape must the layers be in order to form this structure? Is there a pattern to the layers? Could you stack these in a different way to form an equally stable structure?

4. Money – if a standard box holds 12 chocolates, how many boxes would a 2D or 3D version of this require? What is the cost? What if they came in a larger box? Could you save money?

5. Health – how many calories are there in the tower? How far would you have to run to burn off the calories? How many ‘average’ meals is it equivalent to? How many fastfood burgers? How sick would you feel after all that chocolate?!

Instead of setting a question, why not ask your students or even your trainee teacher what questions they can come up with?

228. Toblerone Tessellation

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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:

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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.

201. BBC Crispies

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There was an interesting discussion on the BBC Breakfast programme this morning about the exchange of maths teaching ideas between British and Chinese teachers.

The guests on the sofa were from the NCETM and a serving Head of Maths. There was mention of the innovative ideas used to teach Maths in Britain – including some of mine. I’m not being presumptive, I happen to know that Head of Maths – in fact some of his ideas are on this site (JDs Tree Diagrams). So just in case you missed Breakfast, here is some Cake.

 

35. Ratio that is good enough to eat

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I originally did this activity for a class that I taught twice in a day, but it would work equally well on sequential days.

Equipment
Recipe cards labelled A, B, C, D
Microwave or friendly food tech teacher who will lend you their room
Rice Crispies (or Cornflakes)
Chocolate
Bowls & spoons
Oven glove
Cake cases

Aim
If you haven’t guessed from the equipment list, you are making chocolate rice crispie cakes to investigate ratio.

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Before you start
You need to have at least 4 different recipe cards. Two of them should have the same ratio of chocolate to cereal, but in different quantities. I had one as double the other. The other two should have common errors eg adding rather than multiplying to increase.

Practical
The messy part.

Make the rice crispie cakes and leave them to set. You should make sure each set of cakes is labelled with the recipe letter.

Discussion
This is the fun part. Taste testing in the second lesson – they will be keen to get started.

Each pupil tries each recipe and comments on how they taste. Depending on your recipes, one should be too dry, one should be too chocolatey* and two should be identical. You can then look at the recipes to explain this by comparing quantities and introducing ratio.

*Some will say you cannot have too much chocolate, but if you use Mars bars the high sugar content means they go rock hard if there is not enough cereal. So hard in fact that two boys decided to eat a whole cake each because no one else wanted them and they were quiet for more than ten minutes!

You’re being watched…
I first did this activity 10 years ago when I knew I was being watched by my Head of Department in the tasting/discussion section. The class were a bouncy low ability Y9 group.

They loved it, my HoD loved it and it’s never let me down as a lesson concept since.