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Dicey

Age 7 to 11
Challenge Level Yellow star
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Sophie and Ruyi (Annesley College, Adelaide, South Australia) explained how they worked out their answer:

First we looked at the three pictures of the dice on your web page, and memorised the order which the colours on the dice took.
We then focused on the last two dice and noticed that the orange (which was on the first dice) was not showing on the last two dice.
Using our memory of the colours' relations to each other, we realised that the orange must be opposite the blue.

Catherine (Tattingstone Primary UK) got the same answer, but thought it through a little differently:

I worked this out by making two lists. One list was of 'can't' and one of 'can'.
I first took all the colours which were shown at the same time as the blue (because opposite blue would be on the bottom of the dice when blue is on the top). They are shown in the 'can't' list. Then that left orange when red was at the top. So orange was the colour opposite blue.

Ece (Private IRMAK Primary & Secondary School, Istanbul, Turkey) showed the position of each colour on the dice by drawing a net of a cube:



fig2

Jason (Priory School UK), Alison (UK), Thomas (Tattingstone School UK), Christina (Malborough Primary School, UK), Evren and Christian , Eda , and Ece D (Private IRMAK Primary & Secondary School, Istanbul, Turkey) all agreed that the colour was orange.


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Construct-o-straws

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Little Boxes

How many different cuboids can you make when you use four CDs or DVDs? How about using five, then six?

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The NRICH Project aims to enrich the mathematical experiences of all learners. To support this aim, members of the NRICH team work in a wide range of capacities, including providing professional development for teachers wishing to embed rich mathematical tasks into everyday classroom practice.

NRICH is part of the family of activities in the Millennium Mathematics Project.

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