THE HEXAHEDRON AND OTHER HEX WORDS
Every school child knows that a Hexagon is a flat shape with six straight sides, but here are six more great Hex- words to enjoy, together with instructions on how to make your own Hexahedra!
1) HEXADACTYLY: the condition of having six fingers (or toes) on one (or both) of your hands (or feet). King Henry VIII’s second wife Anne Boleyn was hexadactyl, meaning that you could count all six of Henry’s wives on the fingers of one of Anne’s gloves.
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In the UK, we use a unique mish-mash of Metric and Imperial systems for measurements. For example, petrol is sold in litres (Metric), yet fuel efficiency is measured in miles per gallon (Imperial). Milk is sold in litres, but beer in pints. And during the 2016 Olympics, I even heard a bizarre TV athletics commentary that a long jump was… :
This mess needs clearing up, so let’s decide here and now which is better: Metric or Imperial?
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How many gifts did “my true love give to me” in the traditional song?
For anyone unfamiliar with the song:
“On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me: a Partridge in a Pear Tree”: 1 gift.
“On the second day of Christmas my true love gave to me: Two Turtle Doves and a Partridge in a Pear Tree”: this is another 2+1=3 gifts, so 4 gifts in total so far.
On the third day I’m given Three French Hens, a further two Turtle Doves, and another Partidge in a Pear Tree; so 3+2+1=6 gifts on day three, making 1+3+6=10 gifts in total so far. The song continues all the way to “12 Drummers Drumming” on day 12.
The keys to working out the total number of gifts over all 12 days are the Tetrahedral numbers, which are made up from the Triangular numbers.
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Ten Things To Do with your New Five Pound Note
By now most readers will have seen the new five pound note: made of polymer plastic and featuring Sir Winston Churchill on the reverse. Here are ten fun things to do with your new fiver!
1) See how many times can you fold it in half. The new fiver is designed to be crease-resistant, which makes this challenge even harder. I’ve managed 5 folds so well done if you can manage more! The world record for folding a piece of paper in half is 12 times set by Brittney Gallivan while she was still at High School, but that was starting with a really really long piece of paper (1.2 kilometres long!).
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In June of this year I bought a 60cm ruler from eBay. It arrived promptly – in a HUGE cardboard box measuring 80cm x 40cm x 20cm! I posted a photo on Facebook, and before long the National Media got hold of the story, which was then published in the August 5th editions of both the Daily Mail and the Sun newspapers. The story was even discussed on Channel 5’s “The Wright Stuff”.
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Factors and Multiples are useful throughout maths, but it’s easy to get them mixed up. Here’s how to remember the difference:
FACTORS: The factors of a number are like the ingredients that make it up. If you have the “X-Factor” then you have the missing ingredient needed to be a superstar! Let’s take the number 12:
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Isaac Newton is famous for inventing gravity. Before Newton, we were all just floating around, and you had to tie things to the floor of they’d drift away into space.
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Euler is a famous for having discovered oodles of really beautiful maths. His surname is pronounced “Oiler”.
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SHORT ANSWER: from preschool level right up to super-expert level, maths can be broken down into three main branches: number, shape and patterns. Algebra is simply the language of patterns.
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