On the ninth day of Christmas Maths Sandpit gave to you … Lady Gaga’s charity work.
Image credit: exposay.com
Download the poster here: On the ninth day of Christmas
177. Chrismaths 9
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Tag Archives: problem solving
178. Santa’s Secret
Santa’s secret is that he can get your class to revise harder topics – without them realising!
Equipment
- Download the worksheet (optional)
- Paper & pen
- Calculator
- Paper chains (optional)
Activity
Paper chains are made from equally sized strips of paper. Each loop is made from a strip of paper, which has one end glued to the other.
Question 1
How many 3cm by 18cm strips of paper can you cut from a sheet of A4 paper? Remember, each strip is made from one complete piece of paper.
Question 2
If each strip has an overlap of 1cm, what is the circumference of the loop made? What is the diameter?
Question 3
When two loops are attached there is an overlap of 0.5cm. How long would a chain of 12 loops be?
Hint: two loops with diameter 4cm would have a combined length of (4+4-0.5)cm = 7.5cm.
Question 4
A room has dimensions 5m by 7m. How far is it diagonally across the room?
Question 5
How many loops would a paper chain have if it reached diagonally across the room?
Extension
To make the chain hang in U shape, rather than stretching flat across the ceiling, 5 extra loops are added per whole metre of chain. How long would the chain diagonally across the room be? How many loops?
Challenge
How many sheets of paper would be required to make enough paper chain to hang in a U shape joining every corner of the room?
175. Chrismaths 8
Why is ‘reality’ TV so popular, when we know so much of it is as unreal as it gets?
Whilst you ponder this, consider your eighth gift from the Sandpit – some paparazzi fun!
Download the poster here: On the eighth day of Christmas
UPDATED: Grammatical typo in download corrected (9th December)
173. Chrismaths 7
On the seventh day of christmas my true love sent to me … seven swans a flipping (through a magazine)!
Image credit: babyanimalzoo.com
Download it here: On the seventh day of Christmas
172. Chrismaths 6
On the sixth day of Christmas my true love sent to me … teeny tiny little boots!
Image credit: ebay.com.au
Of course, most geese don’t wear boots these days, but before mass transportation geese were walked to market in little boots or with tar applied to their feet.
Download the poster here: On the sixth day of Christmas
There is a rather splendid video from 31st Dec 1966 on the BBC archive about walking geese to market: http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/chronicle/8619.shtml
166. Merry ChrisMaths 1
I’m not going tinsel crazy yet – I’m just giving you, the reader, a resource a bit early to allow for printing and planning. We have a big noticeboard in the Maths Dept and I thought that this year it would be nice to have a temporary Christmas display: Welcome to the ‘Twelve Days of Chrismaths’!
I will be uploading twelve vaguely christmas related, corny christmas posters, starting today. I’m going to put one up each weekday in school, from 2nd December onwards. You might want to make this into a competition and get students to submit solutions to all the puzzles. You might want to use them as a class activity in the last week of term. Whatever you choose to do, come back each day for the next puzzle.
165. What’s that button do again?
Back in post 73: ‘Calculators: The New Hope’ I discussed using a simple worksheet to identify issues with calculators and to get students to write their own help guide. That worksheet is now available in pdf format: How to use a Calculator. There is also a new link on the original post.
Note: Even if your school doesn’t use that particular make/model of calculator it’s still a good discussion resource or starting point for your own worksheet.