Pipes and pathways

Resources

Puzzling pipes (worksheet)

Puzzling pipes (PowerPoint)

Millionaire Island (worksheet)

Millionaire Island (PowerPoint)

Teaching notes

When solving these two puzzles, students tend to enjoy experimenting with different approaches. You could either distribute the worksheets to students, or show the PowerPoint files on an interactive whiteboard which can be drawn on in front of the group, involving everyone in the discussion.

For Puzzling pipes, you may wish to point out to students that most gas pipes are made up of straight lines and elbows (90° angles), so solutions containing curves are unrealistic, though they may be mathematically sound.

Solutions

Puzzling pipes

One solution is:

Millionaire Island

One solution is:

Extension

Puzzling pipes

Are there any other possible solutions? How could you decide which solution is the best?

Millionaire Island

• Ask students to design their own Millionaire Island with a different number of houses.
• Would the problem be easier to solve if two, three, four or more houses shared a dock?