Candy-Popping Pup

This picture looks like a photo of a beagle getting a shower, but it isn’t a photo at all. It’s a picture made from 221,000 sprinkles lined up to look like a photo! Art student Joel Brochu created this using just red, orange, green, blue, black, and white sprinkles. But no matter how pretty it looks, all sprinkles taste the same! Wee ones: If Joel used red, orange, green, blue, black, and white sprinkles, how many colors is that? Little kids: If you stick on a red sprinkle, then a blue, then a green, then a red again, a blue again…what color comes next?  Bonus: If you use 10 sprinkles of each of the 6 colors for the dog’s nose, how would you count them up by 10s? Big kids: Joel used 221,000 sprinkles. How many more sprinkles would Joel have needed to reach a quarter million? (Hint if needed: what does a quarter of a hundred look like? A quarter of a thousand?)  Bonus: If he used 1 less sprinkle than the 221,000, how many sprinkles would he have used? The sky’s the limit: The dot picture has some number of equal-length rows of sprinkles running across and down. If it used just 221 sprinkles, what are the only 2 numbers that could be the number of rows and columns? (That is, the only pair of numbers that multiplies out to 221.) Answers: Wee ones: 6 colors. Little kids: Green.  Bonus: 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60. Big kids: 29,000 more, to reach 250,000.  Bonus: 220,999 sprinkles. The sky’s the limit: Just 13 x 17, or 17 x 13 if you make the picture wide instead of tall.

Recent Posts

Pick a Math Skill

Pick a Topic