Tag: puzzle

Posted in Geometry

Pentagon to Quadrilateral Puzzle

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Puzzles involving cutting shapes and forming them into different shapes helps reinforce the idea that area do not necessarily change with change in shape. It is also a good activity for developing visualisation skill and spatial ability.

The puzzle below is from one of the leaflets at the booth of Japan Society of Mathematical Education last ICME 12 in Seoul, Korea. The original puzzle is suited for Grade 4. The instruction was to cut the pentagon along the dotted lines and then form them into the shapes shown. The shapes shown in the leaflet is a parallelogram, a rectangle, an isosceles trapezoid, and a general trapezoid. I modified the puzzle for students in the higher level. I have indicated the measure of the two angles just in case you want your students to justify that the pieces really form into quadrilaterals. This is one way to assess your students knowledge of the properties of these parallelograms, trapezoid and trapezoids as they justify each shape formed.

pentagon puzzle

Here are two solutions – rectangle and isosceles trapezoid. Form the other two shapes.

trapezium and rectangle

Posted in Algebra, Geogebra, Geometry

The Pythagorean Theorem Puzzle

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Math puzzles are great activities for enjoying and learning mathematics. The following is an example of Tachiawase. Tachiawase is a popular puzzle in Japan which involve dissecting a geometrical figure into several parts and then recombining them to form another geometrical figure. The puzzle below is credited to Hikodate Nakane (1743). This was one of the puzzles distributed at the booth of Japan Society of Mathematical Education during the ICME 12 in Seoul this year.

Make a shape that is made from two different sizes of squares by dividing them into three parts  then recombine them into one square. [Reformulated version: Make two cuts in the shapes below to make shapes that can be recombined into a bigger square.]

two squares puzzle

Here’s how I figured out the puzzle: I know that it must have something to do with Pythagorean Theorem because it asks to make a bigger square from two smaller ones. But where should I make the cut? I was only able to figure it out after changing the condition of the puzzle to two squares with equal sizes. It reduced the difficulty significantly. This gave me the idea where I could make the cut for the side of the square I will form. The solution to this puzzle also gave me an idea on how to teach the Pythagorean theorem.

I made the following GeoGebra mathlet (a dynamic math applet) based on the solution of the puzzle. I think the two-square math puzzle is a little bit tough to start the lesson so my suggestion is to start the lesson with this mathlet and then give the puzzle later.  As always, the key to any lesson are the questions you ask. For the applet below, here’s my proposed sequence of questions:

  1. What are the areas of each of the square in the figure? Show at least two ways of finding the area.
  2. How are their areas related? Drag F to find out if your conjecture works for any size of the squares.
  3. Can you think of other ways of proving the relationships between the three squares without using the measures of the sides?
  4. If the two smaller squares BEDN and GFNH have sides p and q, how will you express the area of the biggest square LEJG in terms of the area of the smaller ones?
  5. Express the length of the sides LEJG in terms of the sides of BEDN and GFNH.

[iframe https://math4teaching.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Pythagorean.html 550 450]

After this lesson on Pythagorean relation you can give the puzzle. Once they have the correct pieces, ask the students to move the pieces using transformation in the least possible moves. They should be able to do this in three moves using rotation. Click here to download the applet. Note: If you don’t see the applet, enable java in your browser

Use the comment sections to share your ideas for teaching the Pythagorean relation. If you like this post, share it to your network. Thank you.