Plant More Trees

Topics: Starter | Arithmetic | Problem Solving | Ratio

• Petro Els, Greenmeadows School, NZ
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• Cool idea. Worked magic. . . THANKS!
• Rawthorpe High School, Mr Heeley's Y7 brainboxes
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• Ha ha, you had us fooled! We think, however, that theoretically the answer would be 75 mins. We can't believe you've tricked us like this. I now want to find a whole hole (or half a hole!) to jump in and hide from my clever pupils!
  Happy Easter, love set 1 in da Hud xx
• Zara, Belmont Academy
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• Really cool. Very good trick and wasn't expecting it!
• Mrs Cooper, AHS
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• Most of my class realised that it was a trick. However they also worked out 1 hour and 15 mins. 8Y.
• 7cd/M2, King Alfred's College Oxfordshire
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• Liam and Louis figures you can't dig half a hole ! But the rest of us fell in it!!
  For the 2nd question, we thought the answer would be: 1 man takes 5 hours so 2 men take 4 hours. So for half a hole it would take 2 hours.
• Bona, King George V School
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• It's a really good question.150 trees and you can't dig half a hole!
• Year 6, Tickhill St. Mary's
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• We think it would take 2 men a fortnight to dig half a hole...because it would take them that long to work out that you can't dig half a hole! ;).
• Lauren Cowie, High School Of Dundee
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• You tricked us and it is really strange because each day you seem to choose a topic that we are doing in class :D.
• Miss Reakes, West Island School
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• Not one of my set 2 Yr10 class made the leap to realising there is no such thing as half a hole! Then we went on to discuss how not to take everything at face value. Classic starter!
  The students struggled with the concept of half a whole not existing... The word volume would need to be added. Maybe they just didn't like to be tricked......!!!!
• Mr Kavanagh's Fifth Class, Cork, Ireland
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• Our class feels that if the sum specifies a quantity (i.e. the hole) as x then half a hole would be x/2 and so mathematically the question does make sense. The answer is 1 hour and fifteen minutes.
• Amber, Wellfieldcommunityschool
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• I found that they would plant 150 trees but you can't dig half a whole can you?
• Tnorf, Manchester
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• After some deep discussion and debate. We think it takes 1 man 5 hours to dig a 1 hole (whole); therefore it takes 2 men 2.5 hours to dig a full hole and it takes them half the time to dig half a hole so 1.25 hours???? I hope it's a trick question LOVED the debate oot caused! !
• Ling, CCC NZ
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• Should be 150 trees and 48mins to dig 1/2 of the hole.

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