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Math Investigation
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The Investigation poses questions to generate interest in various mathematical topics from the text and encourages students to formulate and investigate their own conjectures. One use of the investigations is for term papers in which students report on their conjectures and the patterns they find.

Click on the Read Me file below to open the investigation in a Word file:

Read Me - Paper Folding Instructions (Word Format) (37.0K)



Laboratory Investigation 5.2

Paper Folding

A student had a standard 8 1/2-inch by 11-inch piece of paper but no ruler. She found that by folding the paper twice she could obtain a length of 6 inches. The first fold which is shown below, produces a 2 1/2-inch length. She then used this length and the 8 1/2-inch length to produce a 6-inch length. She continued to experiment with the sheet of paper and found that she could obtain many other lengths.

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Starting Points for Investigations

  1. How can a length of 6 inches be obtain from two folds?

  2. How can a length of 3 inches be obtained?

  3. How can the 3-inch length be used to obtain an 8-inch length?

  4. Once you have an 8-inch length, what other lengths can be obtained?

  5. A 7-inch length can be obtained by folds that produce two mixed-number lengths. How can this be done?

  6. How many of the remaining whole number lengths less than 11 can be found by paper-folding? Explain your methods.





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