We had our last Math Group meeting of the year
on Sunday. It's been a fun couple of months.
This week's problem used four toothpicks and had
two parts. The first was to find out how many
different shapes that could be made with the four
toothpicks. The rules were that in all of the shapes
had to be continuous, the joins between picks
had to be either 90 degrees or 180 degrees, and that
only two picks to touch at any join. Also, the shapes
couldn't repeat. To test their uniqueness, each new
shape was drawn on a piece of paper and rotated to
make sure that it didn't repeat.
The second part of the problem, was to see if the
shapes could be arrainged in a continuous loop,
moving from shape to shape, by only moving one pick
at a time.
It was a very playful, low stress problem, and was a
nice way to round up the year.