The Friday Fave is a big fan of tasks with more than one right answer. If the
Fave asks Which One Doesn’t Belong? you’d better believe
each of the options can be a right answer. If the Fave asks
How do you know? well, it’s because the Fave really doesn’t
know how you know, but really would like to, and there’s more than one
right way of knowing.
So it is with the newest Desmos activity, Coin Capture. The challenge is write equations for lines that go through the coins, capturing them along the way.
In the introductory challenge, you can get them all with one line. But that’s just Desmos getting you started. As the screen numbers increase, so does the complexity of the challenge. Here are four solutions to the challenge on screen 3.
While we keep track of the number of lines you used, that’s not the only way to describe these. What kinds of thinking is behind each of the solutions above? Which is most interesting? Which one doesn’t belong? Posing the task is straightforward, but there are many right answers that vary in interesting ways. That’s the kind of thing that qualifies an activity for the Friday Fave.
Also there’s a challenge creator.
Now, while you’re thinking about coins and/or targets in the coordinate plane, here are three more delightful activities: