Triple Crowns

Posted on May 18, 2013 by laura

Three really is a magic number, and we love it when things happen in threes. It’s very exciting in sports, like when a hockey player scores three goals in one game, which is called a hat trick. An even more exciting threesome is the triplet of major US horse races: the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, which happens tonight, and the Belmont Stakes. When the same horse wins all three of those races in the same year, it’s called a Triple Crown. This almost never happens: only 11 horses have ever managed to do it, and the most recent did so in 1978! But every year since Sir Barton won all three in 1919, we wait with bated breath to see if the Derby winner can at least win the Preakness and set the stage for a triple crown…and tonight it’s Orb’s big chance.

Wee ones: If a horse wins the first 2 of the 3 major races, how many races does the horse have left to win to score a Triple Crown?

Little kids: Starting in 2002, 5 horses have won the first 2 races but not the third, including I’ll Have Another last year. How many years from 2002 through 2012 have we not had a double winner? Bonus: From 2002 to 2012, how many major races were run in total?

Big kids: The last horse to get a Triple Crown was Affirmed in 1978. How many years ago was that? Bonus: If 20 horses ran in each race, and each time they all had the same chance of winning, what are the chances of the Derby winner winning the Triple Crown?

Answers:
Wee ones: 1 more race.

Little kids: That span includes 11 seasons, not 10 (this is the “fencepost problem” where you have to count both ends), so there have been 6 years with no double winner. Bonus: 33 races in those 11 years.

Big kids: 35 years. Bonus: 1 in 400. The winner of the first has a 1/20th chance the second time, and then faces those chances again. (Just to clarify, the chances of a specific horse winning all three are 1 in 8000, whereas the chances of any horse winning all three are 1 in 400.)

Jailbreak

Posted on May 15, 2013 by laura

Groundhogs usually don’t do anything exciting. They’re the round, brown, kind of boring animals waddling alongside highways and across our backyards. So you can imagine everyone’s surprise last week when a groundhog came barreling into a kids’ baseball practice in New Jersey and started chasing after the kids, even though he himself was only the size of a soccer ball. When the coach ran over to fend him off, the groundhog started chasing the coach, who dove into his car for safety. To make sure the animal didn’t bite anyone, the police captured the groundhog with a loop, but he broke the rope. Then after being caught again and caged in an animal shelter, he broke out of there. That’s one groundhog who doesn’t want to be in captivity – or who just really wants to play baseball.

Wee ones: If there are 9 kids practicing baseball and the groundhog joins in the game, now how many players are there including him?

Little kids: If you have 9 kids and a groundhog running around the field, how many little feet are on the move? Bonus: If you can sprint (run your fastest) 100 feet but the groundhog can make it only 70 feet, by how far can you outrun the groundhog?

Big kids: The coach estimated that the terrifying groundhog weighed 20 pounds. How much more do you weigh? Bonus: If you have 9 kids averaging 50 pounds each, how much more does the baseball team weigh than the feisty groundhog?

Answers:
Wee ones: 10 “players” total.

Little kids: 22 feet: 18 people feet and 4 groundhog feet. Bonus: 30 feet farther.

Big kids: Different for everyone…subtract 20 from your weight in pounds. Bonus: 430 pounds more (450 minus the 20).

Getting a Jump on It

Posted on May 4, 2013 by laura

Tonight some of the fastest horses in America will run in the Kentucky Derby, one of the three major U.S. horse races every year. Horses run really fast, reaching speeds of close to 50 miles an hour. And with that kind of running start, horses can do other stunts, too, like jumping really high and really far. In horse-jumping competitions, horses have jumped over fences taller than 8 feet and muddy ditches as long as 27 feet! Of course, they do this with a jockey, which is what you call the person riding the horse through these obstacles. It’s a great sport for those who think riding an 1800-pound animal at top speed while crammed on a racetrack with other fast, heavy animals isn’t exciting enough.

Wee ones: If your horse can jump over objects 4 feet tall, and you’re 3 feet tall, can your horse jump over you?

Little kids: If during practice you and your horse jump over 2 fences, 9 ditches and 4 rows of bushes, how many obstacles did you guys jump? Bonus: How many more ditches did you jump than everything else put together?

Big kids: If your horse can long-jump 16 feet, and a sandbox is 4 1/2 feet long, how many end-to-end sandboxes can your horse clear completely? Bonus: If your horse needs 32 feet of a running head start for each 16-foot jump, how many sandboxes can your horse jump in a 150-foot-long yard? (Assume only complete jumps with the jumpable number of sandboxes.)

Answers:
Wee ones: Yes – 4 feet is fortunately more than 3 feet!

Little kids: 15 obstacles in total. Bonus: 3 more ditches than other kinds of obstacles (6 in total of those).

Big kids: 3 sandboxes, since 4 sandboxes would be too far (18 feet). Bonus: 9 sandboxes in total. Each jump requires 48 feet in total, and the yard can fit 3 rounds of this, with 3 sandboxes in each jump.

Give Me a B! (B!)

Posted on April 26, 2013 by laura

If you’ve ever watched or attended a major sports event, you might have noticed a bunch of people — some guys, but mostly girls — dressed up in the team colors and standing on the sidelines yelling. They’re called cheerleaders because, you guessed it, they lead the crowd in cheers, since usually the crowd can’t get organized on their own. Cheerleading can go way beyond rhyming, stomping and clapping, though: cheerleaders also do backflips, stack themselves on top of each other in human pyramids, and throw each other in the air. If you want to see their craziest stunts, look up the Cheerleading and Dance Worlds cheerleading competition which runs this weekend. You’ll find out that when they call a person a “flyer,” they aren’t kidding!

Wee ones: If the cheerleaders spell out “Let’s Go!” with each person yelling 1 letter in order, which cheerleader will yell the letter T?

Little kids: In the “basket toss,” the “flyer” – the person thrown in the air – falls and lands on the stretched-out arms of two rows of cheerleaders facing each other and holding hands. If there are 6 people in each row plus the flyer, how many people does the stunt use in total? Bonus: ”Bases” are the strongest cheerleaders who help hold up others standing on their backs or shoulders. If you have 7 bases on hands and knees in a line, and each possible pair next to each other has a cheerleader standing with one foot on each base’s back, how many people are in the stunt?

Big kids: In the competition, squads can have up to 36 members for some age levels. If you have 36 members and 1/3 of them are guys, how many are girls? Bonus: Your routine can’t take more than 2 minutes 30 seconds. If it takes your squad the first 5 seconds to line up, the last 5 seconds to do the final pose, and 7 seconds for each stunt, how many stunts can your squad fit into your routine?

The sky’s the limit: There’s more than one way to stack a human pyramid. For starters, you can stack 1 person on top of 2, who in turn stack on top of 3 (6 total), on top of another row of 4 (10 total) and so on. If instead the pyramid shapes grow from 1 person, to 4 in total, to 9 in total, to 16 in total…given that pattern, how many people are stacked if the bottom row of the pyramid had 13 people?

Answers:
Wee ones: The 3rd cheerleader.

Little kids: 13 people. Bonus: 13 people, again: you can get 6 cheerleaders into the top row.

Big kids: 24 girls. Bonus: 20 stunts, since you have 140 seconds to do them.

The sky’s the limit: Each pyramid adds a new row with the next odd number of people (1 on top of 3, on top of 5, on top of 7…). When you add the rows, the totals are all perfect squares. 13 on the bottom will be 3 rows taller than the 16-pyramid, which means you’ll have 49 people in total.

Pillow Fight

Posted on April 10, 2013 by laura

When a good pillow fight gets started, it’s hard to keep from diving in, especially if you have a big, fluffy, squishy pillow on hand. Swinging a pillow into another person is a great way to release energy without hurting anyone, and really should be done more often. Apparently grown-ups like the idea as much as kids: this weekend over 140 cities took part in International Pillow Fight Day, where in some places hundreds of pillow-wielding people showed up to strut their stuff(ing). So how many pillows got into the act – and how many feathers were lost?

Wee ones: It was the 6th international pillow fight day ever, but it was New York City’s 8th. How many more times have New Yorkers held pillow fights than the world at large?

Little kids: It turns out feather pillows are not allowed at the official pillow fights, because feathers have prickly points. If 16 people show up but 8 of them are banned from the event because they brought feather pillows, how many people are left who can play? Bonus: If half of the remaining people brought a spare foam pillow for others to borrow, now how many people can play?

Big kids: Feathers and foam don’t weigh much, so a normal pillow for sleep weighs only about 2 pounds. How many of those would have to get chucked at you for the stack to weigh more than you? Bonus: If you and your family use pillows with 850 feathers in each, and in a big pillow fight 4 of the pillows split open, how many feathers do you have flying around?

The sky’s the limit: At these citywide pillow fights, participants wore everything from tutus to sequins and dressed up as giraffes, pirates and bananas. If among New York City’s 2000 pillow fighters there were twice as many banana costumes as tutus, twice as many giraffes as bananas, and twice as many pirates as giraffes, and the remaining 800 people wore plain old pajamas, how many people dressed up as giraffes?

Answers:
Wee ones: 2 more pillow fights.

Little kids: 8 people. Bonus: 12, since there are now 4 extra pillows.

Big kids: Different for everyone…divide your weight by 2 and add 1 (whether you got a round number or not). Bonus: 3,400 feathers floating around.

The sky’s the limit: The costumes are in a tutu:banana:giraffe:pirate ratio of 1:2:4:8, so each full costume “set” has 15 people. After carving out the 800 people you have 1200 people left, or 80 sets. There are 4 giraffes in each set, giving you 320 giraffes.