by MathPickle | Sep 19, 2015 |
Taxi Cab Squares (inspired by the Inscribed square problem of Otto Toeplitz, 1911) Give your students practice with Cartesian coordinates as they explore a new variant of a famous, unsolved problem of Otto Toeplitz (1911). This problem has a very wide spectrum of...
by MathPickle | Sep 18, 2015 |
Rainbow Squares is a challenge inspired by Henri Picciotto. Each rainbow arc needs to be anchored at two integers that sum to a square. Here we have tried to find a solution for 1-10, but have failed because the last two numbers, 2 and 3, do not sum to a square. Is...
by MathPickle | Sep 18, 2015 |
Using Least 1s (Conway & Guy, 1962) Using multiplication and addition try to create the target number using the least number of ones. For example… to get to the number 12, you could do (1+1+1+1)*(1+1+1) or (1+1+1+1+1)*(1+1)+1+1 but the first solution is...
by MathPickle | Sep 16, 2015 |
Wormhole! (MathPickle, 2011 – Based on work by Harold Coxeter and John Horton Conway) Send your students on a dangerous trip which coincidently happens to be a fantastic introduction/practice for division. If they make a mistake they’ll crash in a heap of...
by MathPickle | Sep 16, 2015 |
Klingon Attack The Earth is being attacked by Klingons. It is your job to shoot the enemy spaceships out of the sky using our single ion cannon. Download a pdf of puzzle-sheets here. Much thanks to Ex Astris Scientia for their permission to reprint their...
