POW 4-Almost a Rubiks Cube

Problem Statement-The purpose of this problem was to eventually write a

generic equation that could determine how many cubes in an N sided cube had 1, 2,
3, 4, 5, or 6 sides painted. The first step however was to just start by figuring out
how many cubes had these side painted in a 5 by 5 square.
Process-To start, I made a 5 by 5 cube out of paper and counted the cubes
that had each number of sides painted on them. In doing this, I realized that 4, 5,
and 6 sides were never going to be painted so I eliminated these from the problem.
I then did this with a 3 by 3 square, 4 by four square, and 6 by 6 square. After this, I
looked through the table and looked for similarities between the numbers and
generic ways that I could get to all of them.
Solution-The solution I found for the 5 by 5 cube was one side, 54, two
sides, 36, 3 sides, 8 and four, five and six sides, all 0. The equations that I found to
determine the number of sides painted for an N by N by N square were one side, (N2)*(N-2)*6, for 2 sides, (N-2)*(N-2)*4, and for 3 sides it was consistently 8 because
no matter how long the sides were they all had 8 corners, all of which showed 3
painted sides.
New Problem- One similar problem to this one would be: A checkered
bouncy ball with a diameter of 6 cm has every square alternate between blue and
black color. Each square is .5 cm by .5 cm. Someone comes along and erases every
fifth checker of color. How many checkers of each blue and black are on the ball in
the end?
Evaluation- This POW helped me grow mathematically because it helped
reinforce the skills we have been learning in class. It made us work independently
and decide what we needed to do to solve the problem. I like the POWs because
they are a good way to use the things that we learn in more real life and engaging
way. This POW made me think differently because we had to find one example of
something than use that example to go more in depth which is something that we
do not and a lot and made the POW much more challenging.