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Consortium for Mathematics and its Applications

Product ID: Henrys Notes
Supplementary Print
High School

How To Build A Box

Author: Henry O. Pollak, Landy Godbold



We begin with the following question: Isit possible to construct a perfect cubical box from six identical pieces of wood?

(Perhaps a "laziest carpenter" would like that-one size fits all.) By "perfect" we mean just that: For example, if the wood has thickness t, you are not allowed to leave a corner of the box of volume t3 unoccupied.

That would not be a perfect box.

©2005 by COMAP, Inc.
Consortium 89
6 pages

Mathematics Topics:

Geometry, Algebra

Application Areas:

Carpentry, Physics, Topology

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