Math Problems of the Week - Nov. 6, 2022 to Nov. 12, 2022

Lower Elementary:

Question: Alice has 2 brothers. Each of her brothers has 3 sisters. How many children are in Alice's family?

Answer: 5 children

Solution: Since each of the 2 brothers has 3 sisters, that means that there are 3 sisters in the family because both brothers have the same 3 sisters. That means that there are 2 brothers + 3 sisters = 5 children in Alice's family.

Upper Elementary:

Question: Stuart is building a garden wall out of cube shaped bricks that are each half a foot wide. The wall needs to be exactly 12 feet wide. If Stuart uses 96 bricks, how tall will the wall be?

Answer: 2 feet

Solution: Each row of bricks in the wall will need to be 24 bricks wide because there are 24 half feet in 12 whole feet. To find out how high Stuart can build the wall, we need to find out how many rows of 24 he can make out of 96 bricks: 96 ÷ 24 = 4, so the wall will be 4 half feet high, which is the same as 2 whole feet high.

Middle School:

Question: Use the Math Dictionary to solve this problem: Polly has a bucket of paint that is 3/4 full. She uses 4 pints of it to paint a bookshelf and has a quart left. How many ounces of paint can the bucket hold?

Answer: 128 ounces

Solution: Let’s refill the bucket backward. At the end of the project, Polly has a quart of paint. Before that, she used 4 pints, or 2 quarts of paint, so she had 1 quart + 2 quarts = 3 quarts of paint before she started. Since 3 quarts is ¾ of a gallon, the bucket holds 1 gallon. A gallon is the same as 4 quarts, which is the same as 8 pints (2 pints per quart), which is the same as 16 cups (2 cups per pint), which is the same as 128 ounces (8 ounces per cup).

Algebra and Up:

Question: The sum of three consecutive even numbers is 114. What is the smallest of the numbers?

Answer: 36

Solution: We can find the average of the 3 consecutive even numbers by dividing 114 ÷ 3 = 38. Since we’re looking at the sum of 3 consecutive even numbers, the smaller even number is 36 and the larger is 40. You can check your answer by adding: 36 + 38 + 40 = 114.