aluminum boats

This morning, Mr Wood gave us a task (whoa). In a group of three, we had to design and construct a 'boat' that will hold the most glass beads out of everyone. 

Jessie, Wyatt and I got into a group and started coming up with designs. In the end, we decided to use jessies design of a canoe looking boat. Of course, the end product looked NOTHING like what we had planned. Instead it looked like a stand-up taco shell! 

Everyone got to vote for the boat they thought would work best, then we put them into the water and add beads in. The most successful boat (ss brainboat) only had 1 vote but held 70 beads. Our group was second (hms taco) with 47 beads.

names, votes and scores

Everyone was then sent off to redesign, using either ss brainboat or hms taco as they're example (trying to make the designs work better i guess). 

Our first boats bottom was flat, like... an open cup?? so we changed that so the bottom was bowl like. 

The second go we only got 40, but that could've been because the beads were wet. 

It was lots of fun, and the first boats were the funniest.

Ballast 2 - maths!

Yesterday, we tried doing the maths puzzle ballast. That time, we could choose any numbers that we wanted. Today we did the same puzzle, except the numbers were already chosen. we had to find the part of the boat that would sink. Here are the numbers.

 

I tried doing the first one by writing all the possibilities down in my book, like 2x3, 2x4, 4x5 etc. Then i added the other numbers: if I was trying 2x3, i'd add 1, 4 and 5 together. The answers to both of those weren't the same, so I tried the rest. none of those worked either so that meant that one is the part that would sink.

Now i did the same with the second and third parts, and there were answers.

I think this puzzle was really fun and it took me while to actually understand what I was supposed to do. It took me ages to find the answers to the problem, and I was really confused when the first one didn't have a possibility because I forgot there was one that didn't work. 

Ballast 1 - maths

Today we tried a maths puzzle called ballast. I chose five numbers: 3, 5, 0, 2 and 4. The problem is all about balance. on side of the boat its multiplication and the other side is addition, and in the end the total numbers have to be the same.

2 x 4 = 8, and on the other side 0+3+5= 8 as well! and yeah that's how I did the puzzle!

Heres a template if you want to do it by yourself:

maths pickle: blotch!

This week we have been trying out different ways to solve a maths pickle activity blotch. I found it very confusing and difficult to do in the beginning, but near the end I think i finally understood it. 

The first puzzle had 25 blocks. I tried solving it by using 5 and 20, but of course that didn't work. When you colour the number in (in this case 5), you had to surround it. then, if the number of squares that were surrounding it weren't the same as the number (5), colour some other ones. Then I did the same with 20, that didn't work so I used 18 instead and YAY it works!

It was really difficult because sometimes both numbers had to use the same blocks to surround them and that wouldn't work. 

The finished page wasn't very attractive because I kept choosing different numbers after I already started coloring in the blocks.