POW 2 Pick Up Triangles

Maddie Sturm
Toree Mckinney
1/6/15
Restate the Problem
You have as many rods as you want the lengths of the rods are any whole number, as long as it
does not exceed 20 inches. You have four rods that are 6, 4, 3 and 2 inches long. With a total of six rods
including the four from the given side lengths. You have to find how many pairs of similar triangles you
can make using the rods given. The numbers you come up with must be whole numbers, meaning that
they can not have a decimal.
Process
The first thing we did was to get out a piece of scratch paper, and started to plugged possible side
lengths in the various spots on the triangle that didn't already have a side length. It was harder than what
we thought. To organize the numbers already used we made a T-chart to organize them. It is important to
know how how to find the possible side lengths for the triangle. It is important to know the side lengths so
you can solve for the missing side lengths. How we decided to attempt this problem was to draw two
triangles and plug in side lengths for the sides that do not have any side lengths yet, we noticed we had to
use even numbers for the side lengths so that they would not end up being a decimal. We organized our
information in a table below the diagrams of the triangles. This was easy to read because we could easy
compare the information in the table to see if there was any sides lengths that were/or had decimals. We
used whole numbers, it was easier to know the combinations because there was only a handful of
numbers that would work. For example lets say side a is 5 and b is 9, you need to find what the length of
c is and it must be less than the sum of the other two side lengths. So then the range would be from 4 to
14 because any numbers below or above this range would not be less than the two sides we already know
added together. Similarity is when you change the size of a shape although the angles do not change. If
both triangles are equal by a fraction weather its , or .
Solution
In total including rotations we got twelve different triangles with this set of numbers was 9. The
second and third triangle was the same numbers as the second, but it was rotated. The second way we
used the numbers was the two given numbers on each triangle we plugged in the numbers in the missing
side. Including this way we got nine in this strategy. We know there is possible ways to solve this problem
but we decided to use this method because it was easier for us to understand.
A New Problem
If we were to make a new problem we would have two triangles. You have the given side lengths
of 6, 4, 3 and 2. Triangle one having all three given side lengths and triangle two having only one given
side length. How many different triangles can you make? Solve to find the missing numbers in each
triangle.

Evaluation
Maddie: I felt like this problem was very fun after we figured out how to solve it, although it was
a bit frustrating after we got though it is turned out of to understand. I learned that there are so many ways
to solve this problem, we choose to just find the range of the numbers and use all of the even numbers
because we knew they would work with our scale factor . I felt like this problem worked really well
with what we were currently learning in school. I feel like this problem was a bit hard at first to
understand but after toree and I got it it, it made a lot of sense to us after we discussed it with each other. I
feel like I would give myself a total of 18 out of 22 of 25 because we had a hard time understanding it and
at the last minute we asked for help, it would be better if we had more time to revise the pow we worked
on.
Toree: When I first looked at the problem I thought it was going to be hard and I really didnt
want to do it. Although I would definitely consider this POW educationally worthwhile. While working
on this POW I learned how to find a side length of a triangle when its not a right triangle, and this
problem also helped me to better understand how to know when I have a similar shape or not. Once I
started to work on this POW I actually did enjoy working on it although it was somewhat stressful
because we got started a little late. At first the problem was hard because I didnt quite understand what
we were doing but once we got a little help and were pointed in the right direction it was a lot easier to
solve. Honestly I have no idea what I would give our POW out of 25 points.