Tuesday, June 20, 2017

Brain gymnastics

Lately we have more contact with our oldest grandson - Felix - 13 years.
He attends an artistic school, which combines high school program with ballet training.

As a principle students do not have any homework, they should complete all tasks in normal school hours. No wonder, he returns from school at 5, very tired and hungry. He is in bed by 8 pm. Morning alarm at 6.

Old habits do not die easily. I ask him regularly what was at school, what homework he has.
Answer is always the same: nothing Dziadzia (Grandpa). Doesn't matter.

Still few days ago he was searching for a Maths homework.
- What was it about, Felix?
- Something about angles. Does't matter Dziadzia.

But I already put my foot in the gap in his defense.
- Do you know how many degrees is a sum of all angles of a triangle?
- 180 degrees Dziadzia.
- And of quadrangle?
- 360 degrees. We learned all this Dziadzia.
- And of pentagon?
- Also 360 degrees. Cannot be more as full circle has 360 degrees.
- Well, angles of a polygon is something different, look here:


- You see? 3 triangles. How many degrees?
- 3 times 180.
- Right, 540 degrees. And hexagon?
We both focused on drawing. My drawing looked like this:


Felix smiled and showed his sketch;


- What is this Felix?
- Simple. I stretched your hexagon into two straight lines. In fact they are not parallel like in this drawing, they overlap into one line. On both ends (A, D) there are angles of ZERO degrees. And remaining 4 are straight angles - 180 degrees. 4 of them Dziadzia.
The only thing I could do was to multiply (720 degrees). This I learned well in a primary school. But to stretch polygons into straight lines?
For this you need a ballet dancer flexibility. Of the brain.

Polish version here - CLICK.

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