A geometric look at x^3 – y^3

Yesterday my older son started the section about factoring sums and differences of cubes in Art of Problem Solving’s Introduction to Algebra book. After he did some problems we talked about a geometric way to understand how to factor .

 

In the evening we looked at :

 

It is neat to see these algebraic identities appear geometrically. The next thing we are going to look at is a geometric way to understand how factors.