Sharing a Catriona Shearer geometry puzzle with my younger son – part 16

We dove back into our project with Catriona Shearer’s puzzles today. Here’s the one we tackled:

Each square has area 1. What’s the area of the large rectangle? pic.twitter.com/VctxozGLRn

— Catriona Shearer (@Cshearer41) May 9, 2020

This one gave my son a bit of trouble, but he was able to find the solution. Here’s how he explained his work:

After he explained his solution I had him look through the twitter thread to find a solution he liked. He chose this one from @chzachau :

pic.twitter.com/6vJYC3RnEc

— Chris (@chzachau) May 9, 2020

Here’s his explanation of this beautiful solution:

I’m always happy when he chooses solutions that are pure geometry. As I’ve said in a couple of prior posts, his instincts (very much like mine) tend to lean towards computation, so I think he really learns a lot from these pure geometric solutions.