Mind Benders: Numbers with Clues (April 11-14)

Mind Benders challenge the children to look at a number critically and think of it in the context of certain clues.

For example, the number 26 is best known by English speakers as the number of Letters in the Alphabet. So the clue "26 L in the A" usually triggers the association.  Another easy one is "365 D in a Y."

The first sheet attached are 25 Mind Benders I created with math in mind.  The second one is more challenging and should be attempted with the whole family.  Try not to look at the solutions.

The best part of class this week was when each child tried to come up with their own Mind Benders.  Some were more clever than others and some were impossible to find since they are numbers only special to that Mathlete.  The Mind Benders that you create on your own should be numbers that everyone would recognize, unless they come with special clues.  One Mathlete told us hers was in the context of Harry Potter, "7 P on a QT" or 7 players on a quidditch team. Without the special clue, it may have impossible to solve since 7 is not special as a number of members on a team except for HP. 

"7 is the F P N" might be more universal since 7 is the Fourth Prime Number.

We had a lot of fun when it came to the question 525,600 – M in a Y. I was relying on their familiarity with the song from Rent, but once they solved the clue that Y represented a Year, some them surmised that M must be minutes.

They proceeded to ask me to help them solve the number of minutes that they have lived.  So, from five year olds that are 2,628,000 minutes old to 11 year olds that are 5,781,600 minutes old to Mr. Kramer who at almost 49 years old is 25,754,400 minutes old.  Of course, this conversation led to how many second old they are.  Once we calculated this for someone we had to keep adding one every second. 

Here is a list of the math MB (Mind Benders). Answers are provided in the attachment.

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MIND BENDING NUMBERS

Each question below contains the initials of words from well known math concepts or phrases.  I have given you the numbers and the initials.

Can you fill in the words?

1.   365 – D in a Y             _______________________________

2.   12 – I in a F                 _______________________________

3.   3 – F in a Y                  _______________________________

4.   911 – P N in an E         _______________________________

5.   52 – W in a Y              _______________________________

6.   100 – C in a M             _______________________________

7.   8 – S in an O                _______________________________

8.   6 – F on a C                 _______________________________

9.   5280 – F in a M           _______________________________

10. 525,600 – M in a Y    _______________________________

11. 16 – O in a P              _______________________________

12. 2000 – P in a T           _______________________________

13. 360 – D in a F R of a C _______________________________

14. 180 – D inside a T      _______________________________

15. 90 – D in a R A          _______________________________

16. ∞ -- R in a C               _______________________________

17. ∏ -- D in a C              _______________________________

18. 49 – is the S of S        _______________________________

19. 27 – is the C of T        _______________________________

20. 0 – D is the F P of W in C ___________________________

21. 4 – S in a Y                _______________________________

22. 7 – B P in the W         _______________________________

23. 4000 – M is the R of the E            ______________________

24. 25,000 – M is the C of the E         ______________________

25. 93,000,000 – M is the D from E to the S    _____________

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