Magic Square

A Maths Starter of The Day

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 How many different solutions can you find?

 

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Keywords: Starter | Arithmetic

  • Transum,
  • Saturday, April 23, 2011
  • "Teachers can vary the difficulty of this starter. Classes requiring more support could be told the line total (15) and the teacher could drag some numbers into position to give the students a less difficult problem to solve. Answers can be found below and a self marking student version of this activity, for which the students can earn trophies, can also be found by following the link near the bottom of this page."
  • Mrs Boussouara's Maths Class S1, Holyrood Secondary School Gasgow
  • Thursday, September 22, 2011
  • "Mrs Boussouara's first year class thought this was hard but Charelle got the corrct answer. Well done Charelle!!"

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This starter has scored a mean of 3.7 out of 5 based on 156 votes.

 

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Answers

There are eight solutions. Are they all completely different?

2 7 6
9 5 1
4 3 8

 

2 9 4
7 5 3
6 1 8

 

4 3 8
9 5 1
2 7 6

 

4 9 2
3 5 7
8 1 6
6 1 8
7 5 3
2 9 4

 

6 7 2
1 5 9
8 3 4

 

8 1 6
3 5 7
4 9 2

 

8 3 4
1 5 9
6 7 2

A magic square features in Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol. It is the Order Eight Franklin Square which was first published in 1769 by American scientist Benjamin Franklin.


Computer Teacher, do your students have access to computers?
Do you have "Laptops in Lessons"?

Whether your students each have a TabletPC or share a desktop PC, this activity lends itself to eLearning (Engaged Learning).

Laptop

Here is the URL which will take them to a concise version of this page.

Transum.org/go/?Start=May14

Here's the URL which will take
them to a student version of this activity (without the answers!).

http://www.transum.org/go/?to=Magic

 

Here are the oldest magic squares we know of:

Lo Shu Square

Lo Shu Square

The Lo Shu square on the back of a small turtle in the centre, surrounded by the signs of the Chinese Zodiac and the Eight trigrams, all carried by a large turtle

Dürer's Magic Square

This famous 4 by 4 magic square above can be seen in the picture below. Melencolia I is an engraving by the German Renaissance master Albrecht Dürer.

Dürer's Melancholia

Magic Square Bridging Units from Smile Mathematics