It's easy to work out the areas of most squares that we meet, but
what if they were tilted?
This rectangle is cut into five pieces which fit exactly into a triangular outline and also into a square outline where the triangle, the rectangle and the square have equal areas.
Which dilutions can you make using only 10ml pipettes?
What are the areas of these triangles? What do you notice? Can you generalise to other "families" of triangles?
Do you know how to find the area of a triangle? You can count the
squares. What happens if we turn the triangle on end? Press the
button and see. Try counting the number of units in the triangle
now. . . .
A right-angled isosceles triangle is rotated about the centre point
of a square. What can you say about the area of the part of the
square covered by the triangle as it rotates?
A circle rolls around the outside edge of a square so that its circumference always touches the edge of the square. Can you describe the locus of the centre of the circle?
Use the computer to model an epidemic. Try out public health policies to control the spread of the epidemic, to minimise the number of sick days and deaths.
A ladder 3m long rests against a wall with one end a short distance from its base. Between the wall and the base of a ladder is a garden storage box 1m tall and 1m high. What is the maximum distance. . . .
Which exact dilution ratios can you make using only 2 dilutions?
Use your skill and knowledge to place various scientific lengths in order of size. Can you judge the length of objects with sizes ranging from 1 Angstrom to 1 million km with no wrong attempts?
Which dilutions can you make using 10ml pipettes and 100ml
Can you fill in the mixed up numbers in this dilution calculation?
You can move the 4 pieces of the jigsaw and fit them into both
outlines. Explain what has happened to the missing one unit of
Can you break down this conversion process into logical steps?
Try entering different sets of numbers in the number pyramids. How does the total at the top change?
These formulae are often quoted, but rarely proved. In this article, we derive the formulae for the volumes of a square-based pyramid and a cone, using relatively simple mathematical concepts.
We can show that (x + 1)² = x² + 2x + 1 by considering
the area of an (x + 1) by (x + 1) square. Show in a similar way
that (x + 2)² = x² + 4x + 4
Triangle numbers can be represented by a triangular array of squares. What do you notice about the sum of identical triangle numbers?
A red square and a blue square overlap so that the corner of the red square rests on the centre of the blue square. Show that, whatever the orientation of the red square, it covers a quarter of the. . . .
A tilted square is a square with no horizontal sides. Can you
devise a general instruction for the construction of a square when
you are given just one of its sides?
It is possible to identify a particular card out of a pack of 15
with the use of some mathematical reasoning. What is this reasoning
and can it be applied to other numbers of cards?
If you continue the pattern, can you predict what each of the following areas will be? Try to explain your prediction.
Draw some isosceles triangles with an area of $9$cm$^2$ and a vertex at (20,20). If all the vertices must have whole number coordinates, how many is it possible to draw?
Euler discussed whether or not it was possible to stroll around Koenigsberg crossing each of its seven bridges exactly once. Experiment with different numbers of islands and bridges.
First Connect Three game for an adult and child. Use the dice numbers and either addition or subtraction to get three numbers in a straight line.
Practise your skills of proportional reasoning with this interactive haemocytometer.
Six balls of various colours are randomly shaken into a trianglular
arrangement. What is the probability of having at least one red in
7 balls are shaken in a container. You win if the two blue balls
touch. What is the probability of winning?
A metal puzzle which led to some mathematical questions.
The number of plants in Mr McGregor's magic potting shed increases
overnight. He'd like to put the same number of plants in each of
his gardens, planting one garden each day. How can he do it?
Can you find a relationship between the number of dots on the
circle and the number of steps that will ensure that all points are
Given the nets of 4 cubes with the faces coloured in 4 colours, build a tower so that on each vertical wall no colour is repeated, that is all 4 colours appear.
An animation that helps you understand the game of Nim.
The opposite vertices of a square have coordinates (a,b) and (c,d). What are the coordinates of the other vertices?
Meg and Mo need to hang their marbles so that they balance. Use the
interactivity to experiment and find out what they need to do.
A game for 2 players. Can be played online. One player has 1 red
counter, the other has 4 blue. The red counter needs to reach the
other side, and the blue needs to trap the red.
Start with any number of counters in any number of piles. 2 players
take it in turns to remove any number of counters from a single
pile. The winner is the player to take the last counter.
A game for two people, or play online. Given a target number, say 23, and a range of numbers to choose from, say 1-4, players take it in turns to add to the running total to hit their target.
Use this animation to experiment with lotteries. Choose how many
balls to match, how many are in the carousel, and how many draws to
make at once.
What can you say about the values of n that make $7^n + 3^n$ a multiple of 10? Are there other pairs of integers between 1 and 10 which have similar properties?
Here is a chance to play a version of the classic Countdown Game.
Practice your skills of measurement and estimation using this interactive measurement tool based around fascinating images from biology.
Prove Pythagoras' Theorem using enlargements and scale factors.
Can you beat Piggy in this simple dice game? Can you figure out
Piggy's strategy, and is there a better one?
Square It game for an adult and child. Can you come up with a way of always winning this game?
A and B are two interlocking cogwheels having p teeth and q teeth respectively. One tooth on B is painted red. Find the values of p and q for which the red tooth on B contacts every gap on the. . . .
You have 27 small cubes, 3 each of nine colours. Use the small cubes to make a 3 by 3 by 3 cube so that each face of the bigger cube contains one of every colour.
Can you spot the similarities between this game and other games you know? The aim is to choose 3 numbers that total 15.
There are nine teddies in Teddy Town - three red, three blue and three yellow. There are also nine houses, three of each colour. Can you put them on the map of Teddy Town according to the rules?