9 Pigs In 8 Boxes

Math Stumper: Utilise Two Squares to Brand Divide Pens for 9 Pigs

Updated on January 26, 2019

A word problem often involves computational strategy or strategies. In early on uncomplicated school years, word issues will mostly focus on add-on, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Word problems by and large require specific steps to solve them.

Problem-solving, past contrast, differs in that at that place may be two or three steps to solve the problem and there also may be a variety of approaches that are accurate. Such problems are called math stumpers considering they are somewhat open-ended and there are a few different strategies that students can use to solve the problem.

The math stumper below requires students to apply two squares to brand dissever pens for nine pigs.

The Problem and Solution

This section contains two worksheets: the first page shows nine pigs lined up in three rows of iii. Information technology volition likely seem impossible to your students to employ two squares to provide ix separate pens: i for each pig.

But to solve this stumper, students need to recall outside the box—literally. Since yous are requiring students to create 9 pens for the pigs with ii boxes, students volition near certainly think they need to apply more than and smaller boxes (or squares) to provide each pig with a separate pen. Merely that isn't the case.

The second page of the PDF in this section shows the solution. You use two boxes with i tipped on its side (like a diamond) and another square placed perpendicularly within that foursquare. The outside box creates eight triangle-shaped squares for eight pigs. The ninth pig gets a larger, and square, pen within its own box. The problem never said all the pens had to be square or in the same shape.

Making Problem Solving Fun

Math stumper solution — 9 Pigs Stumper Solution.
Deb Russell

The main reason for learning well-nigh math is to become a amend problem solver. At that place are a couple of things students need to do when solving problems. They should ask exactly what type of data is existence asked for. Then they need to determine all the information that is existence provided in the question.

In the 9-pig trouble, students were shown a picture of ix pigs and asked to provide pens for each using merely two boxes. To solve the squealer-pen problem, explain to students that they should think of themselves as math detectives. That means—every bit the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes might have pointed out—eliminating all extraneous noise and unnecessary clutter and focusing on the facts as presented.

You can vary or extend this exercise past asking students to put nine pigs into iv pens so that at that place is an odd number of pigs in each pen. Remind students that this problem, as the previous 1, does not specify the shape of the pens, so they might well starting time with square pens. The solution here is that the pens are joined. Four pens on the outside each comprise an odd number of pigs (i), and a pen is placed in the eye of the four pens (so it'south "inside the pens"), and information technology contains an odd number of pigs (five).