Fun math problem - The animal farm
Hello world and hope all are doing well in their respective parts of the world.Todays problem is a fun little one.
The problem involves animals and I want you to visualize the problem and also try to solve it visually.
Reference :
• How Much Does One Cat Weigh?
Script:
So , in our animal farm we have 4 types of animals
chickens, cats, owls and turtles.
1 chicken weights as much as 1 cat and 1 owl
Yep, its a super chicken.
2 chickens weigh as much as 3 turtles.
3. Finally, 1 owl and turtle weigh the same as 1 cat.
Now given this information, the question for you is - How many owls will balance 1 cat?
Please pause the video and give this problem a try .
And when finished do come back and keep watching.
Welcome back.
Now i am going to try and solve this problem visually.
So let us first see what we have:
On our animal farm we have: chickens, cats, owls and turtles.
And now lets us focus on what we want:
We want the relationship between a cat and an owl.
ok, ‘relationship’ may not be the best word here and don’t get me wrong.
What we want to know is how many owls balance 1 cat in weight.
So we are looking at 2 animals in our answer - owl and cat.
So lets try to get to these 2 animals .
Now from this first figure, we know that 1 chicken is equal to 1 cat and 1 owl.
Now in the answer we are looking for, we do not need a chicken, so lets get rid of it.
Now if 1 chicken weighs 1 cat and 1 owl, we can say that 2 chickens weigh as much as 2 cats and 2 owls, right.
And we will use this information here.
So lets replace the 2 chickens with 2 cats and 2 owls.
So we have 2 cats and 2 owls weigh as much as 3 turtles.
Now pay attention to this interesting step.
I am going to add 3 owls to both sides.
Doing so does not make a difference since the 3 owls on each side will balance each other , right.
So now we have 2 cats and 5 owls = 3 owls and 3 turtles.
So how does this help us???
We, as per this figure, 1 owl and 1 turtle is equal to 1 cat.
So we can replace this RHS with 3 cats.
So we have 2 cats and 5 owls is equal to 3 cats.
Now if I remove 2 cats from either side, it will not make a difference right.
So doing so gives us 5 owls is equal to 1 cat.
And that is that answer we are looking for.
Guys, we did this visually but could also do it using algebra.
Since he problem used animals, I found the visual approach better
Let me know your thoughts in the comments section.
Thanks for watching and keep safe.