Ken's blog

Five-star general Chester T. Hopscotch (the T standing for Tecumseh, a Shawnee chief he admired very much) decided to retire at the age of 75.

The reason general Chester T. Hopscotch  waited so long to retire was that he had been looking to purchase a pentagon-shaped estate to live on – for nostalgic reasons.

His adjutant, Major Janice Crackshaw, had located a property shaped like a pentagon enclosed by rows of palms on a balmy island in the Caribbean. The property Major Janice Crackshaw found was owned by a certain Cantus Sperarum Pythagorean Society which wanted to sell the property to finance a special educational project.

Adjoining the pentagon estate, were five properties in the shape of right triangles, each respectively contiguous to a side of the pentagon estate. The triangular properties were owned and occupied by five elders of the Cantus Sperarum Pythagorean Society, their leader, the Hierophant, living in the smallest triangular property as an indication of humility.

The Cantus Sperarum Pythagorean Society was willing to sell the pentagon property to a buyer who could demonstrate signs of mathematical appreciation and perspicacity, as a neighbor without these admirable qualities would be anathema.

The buyer would have to demonstrate this mathematical appreciation and perspicacity by determining the correct price for the pentagon property – this price being five million dollars times the ratio of the area of the pentagon property to the total area of the five adjacent triangular properties belonging to the Cantus Sperarum Pythagorean Society.

The correct payment offer was to be delivered within 15 days.

Major Janice Crackshaw informed General Chester T. Hopscotch of the conditions of the purchase, who, being of a mathematical bent, was glad to also have found neighbors with a similar inclination, and immediately set about to calculate the payment offer with a pen, a slide rule and a block of yellow paper.

General Chester T. Hopscotch worked out the purchase amount in a short while.

The offer made by Major Janice Crackshaw was gladly accepted by the Pythagorean Society, which looked forward to having an erudite neighbor.

Can you work out how much General Chester T. Hopscotch offered to pay for the pentagon estate rounded to the nearest dollar?

A man named Chadwick wanted to build a square pyramid with three levels to house his wife and kids.

Chadwick wanted the ground floor to be 2000 square feet larger in area than the first floor, which would have 2000 square feet more than the second floor, where he figured to do some meditation and store a good deal of food for his wife Mabel.

Chadwick decided that the length of a slanting edge of the pyramid should be 1.5 times the height of the pyramid.

Can you work out the respective lengths of the side of each floor?

What do you figure is the height of the pyramid?

An eccentric billionaire decided to build two tall pointed towers consisting of a series of stacked cubes. They would serve decorative purposes being placed in parallel at a large futuristic gate in his theme park. The material to be used would be a high-strength, transparent nanomaterial. The billionaire stated that rainwater and some kind of energy would be collected for undisclosed purposes.

The first cube was to have a side length of 1 cm, the subsequent cube sides 1 cm greater than the previous, up to the last cube with a side length of 100 cm.

The architect scratched his head thinking how to add up the volumes. Can you help him greatly simplify the calculations?

What would be the height of the towers, and their combined volume?