My favorite math problems are the ones that come up in real life. Yesterday I cooked a pizza for my three sons. Since I always try to be fair I wanted to cut it as evenly as possible. Since it is difficult to cut a circle into thirds I wanted to cut the pizza in half, the cut each of those pieces in half making quarters and keep cutting until I could divide the number of pieces evenly. So my question was how many pieces would I end up with when the number of pieces was evenly divisible by three.
Another way of stating the same problem would be...if you start with the number 2 and repeatedly double it (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, etc) how long will it take until you get a number which is evenly divisible by the number 3.
I will post the answer in the comment section.
1 comments:
It will never be divisible by 3 since the remainder is alternately .3333 and .6666. When the remainder is .3333 the next time it is doubled the remainder goes to .6666. Doubling .6666 goes back to .3333 and the cycle repeats forever.
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