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Math Fair Category: Measurements

Barbanegra the Pirate

The crafty British pirate, Blackbeard (Spaniards called him Barbanegra), had a keen mind for mathematics. The following are excerpts from a diary found in a…

Un-Babushka Squares

When, Polyo, wants to rebel from her claustrophobic family, she seeks out solitude to work on very Un-Babushka-like puzzles. That means she wants puzzles where…

Walls of Rock

Beaumaris castle in Wales was the largest of the Welsh castles built by King Edward I (r. 1272-1307) Construction began in 1295, but was never…

Vermeer’s Paintbrush

When painting this painting of a music lesson, Vermeer, the great Dutch artist, dropped his paintbrush on the tiled floor. He noticed that two ends…

Tiling on Titan

The Wise Women of Titan want to re-tile the enormous rooms of their palace using rectangles, but for aesthetic reasons they do not want identically…

Termite Terrorists

A colony of termites has attacked a house by carving out passageways trough the floorboards. The damage done is proportional to the number of triangles…

Stair Climber

The LCD numbers on a stair climber or alarm clock or microwave are made up of straight sections arranged either horizontally and/or vertically. That is,…

Snake in a Box

Equipment: Pieces numbered 1 through 25 and a 5×5 board. Number of Players: 2 (a cobra player, and a snake charmer) Time: 10 minutes How…

Siege Geometry

A siege is a blockade of a town, city or fortress to try to make it surrender. One of the greatest practitioners of the siege…

Rocket-Propelled Coyote

Coyotes demarcate their territory by peeing on bushes, rocks, shrubs, cacti, trees, and anything else that is lying around. It is tiring, never-ending work. That…