In the Dark

The 2022 cycle of Leaving Certificate examinations is under way and the first Mathematics (Ordinary and Higher) were yesterday there’s been the usual discussion about whether they are easier or harder than in the past. I won’t get involved in this except to point you to this interesting discussion based on an archive of mathematics questions, that this year the papers have more choice for students and that, apparently, the first Higher Mathematics paper had very little calculus on it.

Anyway, I was looking through some old Applied Mathematics Leaving Certificate papers, as these cover some similar ground to our first year Mathematical Physics at Maynooth, and my eye was drawn to this question from 2010 about two balls jammed in a cylinder…

I’d add another: does it matter whether or not the cylinder is smooth (as this is not specified in the question)?

Your answers are welcome through the comments box!

This entry was posted on June 11, 2022 at 4:06 pm and is filed under Cute Problems, Education, mathematics with tags Applied Mathematics, Leaving Certificate. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.