Cut and Change

The challenge of cut and change ... can you make a ...?

This suite of problems invites you to cut and change shapes or rectangular paper into something different.

Are you up for the challenge?

The Case of the Large Hole

Can you cut up an old playing card to make a hole big enough to walk through?

(Image courtesy of Alice Gilderdale.)
holding playing card
Rearrange and Make

Can you cut out the seven shapes below and rearrange them to make new shapes?

A tangram is based on a square cut into seven pieces:

Insert image

Try making these shapes with all seven tangram pieces:

Square

Rectangle

Triangle

Parallelogram

Trapezium

Pentagon

Hexagon

You can download, print off and cut up the pieces from this sheet.

Triangles to Squares

You will need twenty right-angled triangles for this challenge:

Triangles

The shortest side of each triangle is 4cm and the side at right angles to it measures 8cm.

You can download a template of the triangles to cut up here.

Can you make a square using all the triangles?