POW 3

Queens Tiles

Introduction:

There is a queen who would like to make a rectangular courtyard designed out of square tiles. She
plans on having all visitors walk along a diagonal path and is therefore planning to replace the tiles
that are going to be walked on regularly with more expensive tiles that will not wear as quickly. The
queen continues to change her mind about the size of the courtyard she wants, so the designers are
tasked with creating a general formula that will suit situations for any rectangle. How many special
tiles would she need for a 4-by-6 rectangle? How about a 63-by-90 rectangle? How about an x-by-y
rectangle? We will start with smaller rectangles such as 2-by-1, and 4-by-6 and continue to get larger
until a pattern might be found.

Process and Justification:

I started my process by drawing rectangles of an increasing number of units in search of a pattern that
applies to all of them.

2-by-1: 4-by-6: 6-by-6:

2 special tiles

8 special tiles 6 special tiles

3-by-9: 5-by-10: 10-by-12:

9 special tiles

10 special tiles

20 special tiles
At this point in the process, I started to run out of room on my graph paper, as well as lose patience with
counting out grids so I begin to use GCD or the Greatest Common Denominator so as to allow myself to
make the grids as small as possible so that they would be easier to draw. I then continued the above
process.

18-by-24 (3,4 GCD=6): 48-by-32 (6,4 GCD=8): 63-by-90 (7,10 GCD=9)

64 special tiles 144 special tiles

36 special tiles

From this stage, I began to look for patterns between the numbers I used and the number of special tiles
that were required. Originally, I tried using the area and multiplying length by width and then finding
something that might be subtracted or divided from the area that revealed the number of special tiles.
When that failed I attempted adding, which is when the solution clicked for me.

It had to do with the greatest common denominator. When you add, for example, 18 and 24, as we did
above, you get 42, and then if you subtract the greatest common factor you will get the number of special
tiles, in this case, 36. Through trial and error, I tested this theory on all of the rectangles I had created (all
of the rectangles above) and found this to be true every time.

Solution:

A queen wants to create a rectangular courtyard on which people walk diagonally across. Because of this,
the tiles on which people will walk, the tiles on a diagonal from one corner to another, need to be more
expensive and of a higher quality than the rest.

In order to find how many tiles are needed use the formula x+y-GCD(x,y)=n, where x and y are the side
lengths of the rectangle, and n equals the number of special tiles needed

Using this we can also say that the number of tiles that the diagonal line crosses in a 63-by-90 rectangle is
144.
Reflection:

I experienced an area of personal growth in this project through my new understanding greatest
common denominators and how they may be used in real-world situations. I collaborated, once I had
found the solution, in helping others to understand how to get to said solution, which is where I
experienced another area of growth in my attempt to explain how I got to the solution without giving
the solution away as I have done in the past.

Extension Question:

What if the tiles were triangles rather than squares, how would that affect the equation.