#139 BLOXO cubes
Chloe and Clive are hard at work packing BLOXO kids’ blocks in the warehouse. There are two kinds of block: yellows, which are a set of four cubes stuck together to form a 2×2 square, and blues, which come as single cubes.
With a pile of blocks in front of them and a box to fit them in, Clive became despondent. “This box is big enough to fit 27 cubes in a 3×3×3 arrangement and we need to fit in six yellows and three blues, which does add up to 27 cubes. But I’m not sure they’re going to fit – some of these awkward yellows are going to stick out the top.”
“I’m sure we can work out a way to arrange them so they all go in the box,” exclaims Chloe.
“Well, I’m fairly confident they won’t fit,” replies Clive.
Who is right? Can you prove it? (Playing with some toy bricks might help.)
#138 Ice cream coincidence
Solution
Mr Slippy is right. As far as the digital display on the drivers’ thermometers is concerned, it is possible that they clicked over at exactly the same time and never showed the same temperature. However, the actual temperature must have been the same at some point as temperature changes continuously. The graph of Van A’s temperature always remained in a band between -13°C and -18°C, but the graph of Van B’s temperature went outside that range and thus must have crossed over Van A’s line somewhere as it went from -12°C to -20°C.
Quick quiz #127
1 What was the first spacecraft to reach interstellar space?
2 Which term applies to larvae that look like caterpillars: scarabaeiform, eruciform or vermiform?
3 What was the earliest known Meso-American civilisation?
4 The term “robot” was first applied to an automaton in a play by which writer?
5 Borrelia bacteria cause which vector-borne disease?
Quick quiz #127
Answers
1 Voyager 1
2 Eruciform
3 The Olmecs
4 Karel Čapek, in his play R. U. R.
5 Lyme disease
- Solution next week