Chanukah is coming up soon and that means we will see the number eight a lot. We have eight days and eight candles on the eighth night. The food we eat could also have eight parts to it — an octagon-shaped latke.
Imagine a latke made by taking a 3 inch by 3 inch square latke and chopping off the corners. That is, one inch edges remain on all four sides and the other four edges are diagonal. What is the area of this octagon latke?
Solution. The area is 7 square inches. Here’s a way to calculate it: We started with a 3 by 3 square which has a total area of 9 square inches. Each corner is the area of half a square inch. That means that four corners have a total area of 2 square inches. 9-2=7 so the area of the remaining portion, that is the octagon shaped latke, is 7 square inches. Shabbat Shalom!
Ari Blinder is a math educator living in Highland Park and the owner of Math for the Masses, an innovative math tutoring and consulting company. For more information, visit www.math4masses.com. Ari can be reached at [email protected].
