Did you know that Mr. Lawrence has magical powers? When Middle School students pick a number at random between 10 and 99, Mr. L can use his extrasensory perception to determine the number.
The trick is described below. Of course, it is best to have Mr. L perform it live -- which he is happy to do. Just visit the Math Study room on the top floor of the school, and he will drop everything to perform the trick. Really -- happy to do it!
If you don't get to come by, hopefully you can imagine how amazing it is from what follows.
How does he do it?
How can he have such amazing ESP?
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You Too
Can Be a Magician
Mr. Lawrence will perform
a trick. Once you figure out how it
works, you can do it too!
Pick a number. Any number between 10 and 99. Mr. Lawrence will determine what it is, using
his extrasensory perception.
Mr. Lawrence will read your
mind. In order to help write the number
down three times in a row and focus on it hard. If your number was 98, you would write
989,898 and focus on it.
Mr. Lawrence’s first bit
of magic will be to determine if your six-digit number is prime. If it is, he will tell you what it is.
If it is not, he will
tell you which of the following eight numbers goes into it evenly (in other
words, which of the following eight numbers is a factor):
91
111
|
21
481
|
39
259
|
37
273
|
You will check to see if
he is correct. He might ask you to take
the quotient and divide it by another one of these numbers.
At this point, Mr.
Lawrence will tell you what your original number was. Ta-da!
Now you perform the
trick, and in your submission explain how it works!
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