Maths - Youcubed

This week in maths we looked at patterns with cubes and how it grew each time. The purpose of the task was to learn about generalizing and finding a rule for it. The rule was so we could have any number given to us as we would be able to find out how many cubes would be there in the shape, following the pattern, for example. For our problem, we had 4 figures given to us. The first figure had 1 cube, the second had 3 cubes, third had 6 cubes and the fourth figure had 10 cubes. As a class we found out that the pattern that the number of cubes, in relation to the no. figure, was as the following: The number of cubes going down the side, plus one. So the 1st number times the 2nd one (number+1). Then half it, or divide by two. That was the rule for finding the how many cubes the figure given to us had.