Cleighton Boehme

Oct. 7, 2017

KSA Reflection #5

KSA #4: You understand the subject disciplines you teach. You have completed a structured program of
studies through which you acquired the knowledge, concepts, methodologies and assumptions in one or
more areas of specialization or subject disciplines taught in Alberta schools

What have I done to meet this descriptor?

Throughout this week, and since the beginning of my internship, the teachers at our school (especially
the math teachers) have been sharing math riddles. This week, I applied my understanding of
mathematics to solve two riddles. One of them was simpler than the other, but both required a
knowledge of mathematics and prompted deeper thinking.

What artifact illustrates this?

The first riddle was the simple one. It goes like this:

Three mathematicians attended a math conference, and since they were quite familiar with
each other, they decided to share a hotel room to save money. The receptionist told them that
the room cost $30, so they each contributed $10 to share the bill equally. In the morning, the
receptionist realized that the room should have been only $25. The receptionist gave the
bellhop $5 to take to the three mathematicians. On the way up the elevator, the bellhop
realized that $5 would not split equally among three people, so the bellhop decided to keep $2
and give them each $1. After receiving the $1, each mathematician had paid $9 in total. If each
paid $9, equaling $27 in total, and the bellhop kept $2, with a final total of $29, what happened
to the extra dollar?

After hearing this, my mind began to turn. I thought it through, and it began to become clearer. After
talking to another teacher who was working on solving the riddle, it clicked. The total of $29 is incorrect.
Each mathematician paid $9, totaling $27. Each dollar they received in return subtracted $1 from the
total $30 they paid. The bellhops $2 should not be added to $27 to equal a total of $30; instead, the
bellhops $2 should be subtracted from the $27 to equal $25, the price of the room. The extra $2 that the
mathematicians paid was the bellhops tip. In the end, the total of $30 is not significant.

The second riddle was more complex. It goes like this:

There are 100 lockers in a hallway. One hundred students pass by the lockers. The first student
walks down the hallway and opens every locker. The second student closes every second locker.
The third student opens or closes every third locker (depending on if it is already open or
closed). The fourth student changes every fourth locker, and so on.

1. After all one hundred of the students have passed, how many lockers are open,
and which lockers are open?
2. What is the general formula for determining how many lockers are open when
there are lockers and students?
To solve this riddle, I made a table and looked for a pattern. The other teachers worked on tables like
this as well. Here is the table:

As I thought about the patterns in this table, I began to realize that after each student number, their
corresponding locker number stopped changing. I circled this pattern (I have highlighted it in the table
above). This means that by the tenth row of this table, each locker will stay as it is until the end. The
final student will change only the 100th locker. Seeing this helped me to begin to make the connection.
Another teacher then pointed out that only the perfect squares were open (1, 4, and 9 in this table). This
pattern holds true until the end, so the answer to the first question is that there are ten lockers open,
and they are lockers 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81, and 100.
The second question in this riddle proved to be a little bit more difficult. Another teacher said that he
had found that the square root of gave an answer that was really close to the actual number of lockers
that are open. This got me thinking, but I didnt quite figure it out yet. After sleeping on it, I woke up,
and the answer just came to me. Since the pattern of perfect squares being open would hold true for
any number of lockers, if you took the square root of for any number of lockers, the greatest integer
of the square root would be equal to the number of lockers that are open. This means that until you
reach the next perfect square, the number of open lockers will be equal to the square root of the last
perfect square.

This is what the math looks like:

You can see this pattern in the highlighted table that I shared earliercount the number of open lockers
in each row. This pattern continues, and it holds true.