We teach our young kids all the basic math concepts additiion , subtraction, multiplication and division. Soon they master it and we move on to teach them fractions and decimals and so on. We have taught them 2+5 is 7 and 8 X 9 is 72. Now it’s time to connect the math they learn in school to their everyday life, just like the problem of ‘ A Bag of Marbles’ . Ask them a simple addition problem in a twisted way and they would be perplexed for a while before even approaching the problem. Introducing them to real life math problems actually develop their deductive reasoning skills which they will use throughout their lives.
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Here is a very simple example to teach kids on how when faced with a situation you can’t figure out, sometimes math can help.
The Problem
A shopkeeper received a shipment of marbles. There were 10 bags with 1000 identical marbles of 1 gram each in the shipment. Later, he was notified that the dealer, by mistake shipped him one bag of defective marbles which weigh 1.1 gm each. And the dealer doesn’t remember which bag contains the defective marbles. The shopkeeper plans to go just once to the central weighing machine to get ONE ACCURATE weight.
How can he identify the bag with the defective marbles with just one weighing?
Give it a try and leave your answers in the comment section. Or, you can check the solution below.
If you would like to introduce your kids to more deductive reasoning skills, these are some really good books for them.
I hope you enjoyed solving the problem of ‘A Bag of Marbles’ from everyday life scenario using math concepts. In case, you are looking for more math puzzles , check them out here.
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Happy Problem Solving !
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