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Amazing Narratives
This problem deemed to be more difficult than
it first appeared, like many of Lockharts
questions. In this problem, In this problem,
Lockhart shows a cube with a sphere inside.
He asks if the sphere makes up half of the cube
or more? Ive been asked this before and the
answer seemed to obviously be yes if the
sphere touched each end of the cube, however,
I never knew how to explain it
mathematically. Through some bantering
with friends and trying out a few different
methods, I was able to figure out how to prove
the sphere was indeed larger than half the
cube.
First, I struggled with myself for a bit. I knew
it had to do with something with volume
thanks to the familiar shapes and
understanding that I wanted to find if the
spheres volume was larger or equal to that of
the cube. I split them up and wrote down the
equations of each shape. Then I felt lost again.
I didnt really know where to go from there.
Thankfully, I had another peer working on this
problem with me and we realized that if the
sphere was touching the faces of the cube, the
diameter would be the same as the length of
cube. Using that, I found a temporary
Amazing Narratives
Why is the product of two even numbers
always divisible by four?
How did you attempt to solve it?
At first I tried to use algebra,
coming up with nothing really. I
tried to write an equation but
the variables never really made
sense so I quickly scrapped that.
I resorted to drawing out my
division like I had been forced to
in elementary. I figured that if
this was about the basics of
divisions, it be best of use the
basic method of divisions: