We love it when our food talks to us. Snapple puts a “real fact” inside each bottle cap for its teas and juices. Bazooka Joe gum prints a brain teaser inside each wrapper. Best of all might be those square Dove chocolates, each of which has a little saying stamped inside its foil wrapper, like “Smiling is free” or “You’re invited to relax” (ha!). The thing is, in order to make this fun, the makers of these snacks have to think up a lot of sayings, which all have to be short enough to fit on the cap or wrapper. In other words, it’s all about words, but it also becomes a big math problem.
Wee ones: If your Dove chocolate says “Love is yummy,” how many words is that?
Little kids: How many letters does “Love is yummy” have? Spell it out with a grown-up! Bonus: If the wrapper can hold 15 letters, how many more letters could squeeze in after “Love is yummy”?
Big kids: If the 60 chocolates in a bag use 10 sayings on equal numbers of chocolates, how many chocolates have each saying? Bonus: What if each saying shows up on only 5 chocolates in the bag? How many sayings did the Dove folks have to think up?
Answers:
Wee ones: 3 words.
Little kids: 11 letters — that’s 4 plus 2 plus 5. Bonus: 4 more letters.
Big kids: On 6 chocolates apiece. Bonus: 12 sayings.
Laura Bilodeau Overdeck is founder and president of Bedtime Math Foundation. Her goal is to make math as playful for kids as it was for her when she was a child. Her mom had Laura baking before she could walk, and her dad had her using power tools at a very unsafe age, measuring lengths, widths and angles in the process. Armed with this early love of numbers, Laura went on to get a BA in astrophysics from Princeton University, and an MBA from the Wharton School of Business; she continues to star-gaze today. Laura’s other interests include her three lively children, chocolate, extreme vehicles, and Lego Mindstorms.