The Big Cheese

Have you ever heard the expression “The Big Cheese”? It makes you wonder how big the biggest cheese in the world is. Cheese can be made from cow’s milk, or goat, or sheep. The biggest sheep’s milk cheese ever weighed 1,319 pounds, but the biggest goat’s milk cheese ever weighed more than 2,000 pounds! That’s almost as heavy as a car – and could top a whole lot of burgers.

Wee ones: How many sides does a square slice of cheese have?

Little kids: If you top 4 crackers with a slice of cheese, then grab 3 more plain crackers, how many crackers do you have for your snack?  Bonus: If you have 8 burgers, and of those 8 there are 2 more with cheese than without, how many cheeseburgers do you have, and how many plain?

Big kids: If you make a burger plain with no cheese, then 2 with cheese, then 1 plain to repeat, then 2 with…is the 19th burger plain or cheese-topped?  Bonus: By the time you’ve made 14 cheeseburgers, how many burgers have you made in total?

The sky’s the limit: If a burger uses just 2 ounces of cheese, how many burgers could have been topped by the cheese from that 1,500-pound sculpture? (Reminder if needed: A pound has 16 ounces.)

Answers:
Wee ones: 4 sides.

Little kids: 7.  Bonus: 5 burgers with cheese, 3 without.

Big kids: It’s plain, since it’s first in a new set of 3.  Bonus: 21 burgers, since you’ve now made 7 full sets of 3 burgers.

The sky’s the limit: 12,000 burgers! There are 8 sets of 2 ounces in a pound, so every pound can top 8 burgers.

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