IMSA E2K+ 4-5 Program
February 2009 Problem of the Month
due by the end of the day on February 27, 2009
How Many Does It Take To Make Mom Happy?
Jenni and Arthur wanted to give their mother a very special candy treat for Valentine’s Day. They wanted to give her a pyramid of round chocolate truffle candies. The base of the pyramid would consist of 15 round truffles placed in the shape of a triangle. Additional round candies would be placed on top of the base, in the gullies, to form another triangular layer. This process of adding triangular layers would continue until there was only one round truffle on the top. Given this information, how many layers would be in the pyramid, how many truffles would be in each layer, and what would be the total number of round truffle candies in the pyramid?
Make sure you give the number of truffles in each layer, the number of layers, and the total number of candies. You must explain how you got your answer, so please be specific. Get up early on Sunday, February 22 and you can see a crescent moon, Mercury, Jupiter, and Mars (hard to see) in the southeastern predawn sky. Too lazy to do that, then check out a very bright Venus in the western sky well before dark and shortly after sunset. Keep looking up – you never know what you might see!
Dr. Fraccaro